Biden’s U.N. Ambassador: ‘White Supremacy Is Weaved into Our Founding Documents and Principles’

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Wednesday that racial equity is a top focus for her as “white supremacy is weaved into our founding documents and principles” in the U.S.

“When we raise issues of equity and justice at the global scale we have to approach them with humility,” Thomas-Greenfield said in remarks at the National Action Network’s virtual conference. “We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect union {snip}”

She recounted a recent speech she gave before the UN General Assembly for the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in which she spoke about how her great-grandmother was the child of a slave “just three generations back from me.”

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“I’ve seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

She added that racism is not the problem of the person who experiences it, “racism is the problem of the racist and it is the problem of the society that produces the racist.”

“In today’s world, that’s every society,” she said, adding that white supremacy led to the “senseless killing” of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and “so many other black Americans.” {snip}

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