What’s the difference between the two Black men expelled from the Tennessee state legislature and the one White woman who was proposed but survived the vote?  Five racists.  Yes, you can say that all 70 Republicans who voted to expel the two Black representatives who voiced support for school safety advocates from the floor of the chamber are racists.  But to be fair, that may not be accurate.

The March 30th demonstration for gun control after continuing gun violence in schools brought thousands of people to the Capitol grounds in Nashville, but only a few hundred at most entered the building.  Through doors, not windows. Perversely, the GOP’s Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton said the March 30th protest–where no one was arrested, no one was harmed, no laws were broken, no unauthorized person walked on the House floor, no one was evacuated and the Tennessee Capitol building had been open to the public–was worse than January 6th, where… well, you know.

As the Daily Beast points out, a total of 65 Republicans voted to expel all three Democrats.  The charges?  Basically a matter of decorum:  the three were very vocal in urging the demonstrators on; one used a blowhorn.  It disrupted business on the floor of the House, granted, but that’s what demonstrations are supposed to do:  make those in power uncomfortable and inconvenienced so that they effect change.  Peaceful demonstration is kinda a cornerstone of the Constitution.  Were they disruptive?  Yeah, sure.  But it’s not like these people were child molesters.

Oh, yeah, quick side note:  Let me mention here that the Republicans in this chamber refused to expel a member who admitted to molesting three high school students.  You remember Cameron Sexton, the House Speaker who was so offended by the lack of decorum he insisted these members be expelled?  In a Jim Jordan-esque pique of partisanship, he essentially said former legislator David Byrd’s 2017 admission that he molested three female athletes when he was their high school coach in the 1980s was old news and why you gotta bring that up, man?  (Amazingly, Byrd continued to hold his teaching license in the state through at least 2019.) Anywho… back to the showgram:

We cannot say that the 65 who voted to oust all three Democrats are racist.  They did, after all, vote to expel a white woman.  But that was a line too far for white Republican men Mike Sparks, Jody Barrett, Rush Bricken, Sam Whitson, and Lowell Russell, who just could not stand being in the same chamber as the two young Black men, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, but they could not get themselves to rid the chamber of white woman Gloria Jones, who commented on the fact that she alone made it through, “I think it’s pretty clear, I’m a 60-year-old white woman, and they are two, young Black men.”

So yeah, we can say The Five are definitely racists.  But we can’t say that about the other 65.  They may or may not be racists; we don’t know.  Of them, we can say with certainty that they are fascists for their abuse of power for political reasons to suppress the voices of elected officials, but only Sparks, Barrett, Bricken, Whitson and Russell are fascists and racists.