‘About 99 Percent of It’: Chicago’s Lightfoot Rates the Amount of Criticism She Gets Because She’s a Black Woman

Nick Kangadis | July 1, 2021
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A typical tactic the left uses to deflect from their own shortcomings is to simply call people racist or sexist. It’s an easy and lazy, yet strangely effective way to mask ones own professional failures or lack of coherent arguments.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot joined WTTW Chicago — the city’s PBS station — for an interview concerning different issues plaguing the “Second City” on Tuesday evening.

Towards the end of the interview, “Chicago Tonight” host Phil Ponce teed up a question for Lightfoot and asked the mayor whether she thinks the criticism she receives — particularly from the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board — stems from her being “a woman, and specifically a black woman.”

“About 99 percent of it,” Lightfoot said. "Look at my predecessors. Did people say that [former longtime Mayor] Rich Daley held tea sessions with people that he didn't disagree on? [Former Mayor] Rahm Emanuel was a polite guy who was a uniter? No. Women and people of color are always held to a different standard.”

Lightfoot brought up the justified criticism she received following the edict she gave back in May when she only allowed “journalists of color” to interview her in order to commemorate the two-year anniversary of her election.

“This criticism comes just about a month or so after I made a pointed decision at my two-year anniversary that I was only going to give interviews, for that two-year anniversary, to journalists of color,” Lightfoot said. “And it was like the sky was falling on the part of some of the folks that are embodiments of the status quo, including some of the media folks.”

Lightfoot then immediately attacked the Tribune’s Editorial Board and other local media boards because — as she put it — “do not reflect our diversity.”

When Lightfoot says “diversity,” it seems as though she only refers to “people of color,” because no matter her excuse, she did discriminate against white journalists merely trying to do the job they were hired to do during the previously mentioned two-year anniversary of her election.

Maybe Lightfoot should look in the mirror, because a large portion of the criticism she gets is because she’s part of the “status quo” she pretends to be trying to buck.

Pro-tip, lefties: You ARE the establishment. And in Chicago in particular, you have been for a long time.

For video of Lightfoot's comments, watch below:

 

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