White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday said President Biden has no plans to remove UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield over comments she made that “slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.”
The senior US diplomat described racism and discrimination in the US in taped remarks this week to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
Emerald Robinson of Newsmax asked Psaki at her daily press briefing whether Biden is “going to remove her from her position” — saying the speech hit themes similar to an anti-US diatribe by Chinese diplomats in Alaska last month.
But Psaki defended Thomas-Greenfield, who also denounced China’s treatment of Uyghurs and Burma’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims in her remarks to Sharpton’s group.
“Is the president going to remove an African American woman with decades of experience in the Foreign Service who is widely respected around the world from her position as ambassador to the UN? He is not,” Psaki said.
“He is proud to have her in that position. She is not only qualified, he believes she is exactly the right person in that role at this moment in time.”
Psaki added, “I have not seen her comments. I will say that there’s no question that there has been a history of institutional racism in this country and that doesn’t require the UN ambassador to confirm that.”
In her remarks, Thomas-Greenfield said, “the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents.”
“I have personally experienced one of America’s greatest imperfections,” she said. “Those of us who experience racism cannot, and should not, internalize it, despite the impact it can have on our everyday lives. Racism is the problem of the racist. And it is the problem of the society that produces the racist. And in today’s world, that is every society.”
The US Constitution infamously contained the Three-Fifths Compromise that counted black slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of taxation and representation. The Constitution was amended in 1865 to ban slavery.