Yes, I do think, that doing a better job of calling balls and strikes, on both sides, or all sides, is important …

            Abby Phillips, CNN Panel on Journalism, 6/7/25

What is the “other side” of African American history? Does anybody know?  I don’t?

            Abby Phillips, 2 days earlier on CNN News Night, June 5, 2025

DEI is something we must have …

            Tawana Brawley race-hoaxer Al Sharpton, 1/4/24

            Abby Phillip’s remarks in a recent panel discussion about Linda McMahon’s role in combatting DEI in education are deeply revelatory about the Democrat insistence on retaining DEI.  However, before I discuss that, it is worth noting that the earlier discussion on the show was the usual reiteration of the standard leftist sophistries.

            Phillip stated that Trump’s proposed tax cuts “will cost money”.   However, there is no way she can know that.  Even President Kennedy, argued that strong economic growth would not continue without lower taxes.”  So, we will have to wait and see on Phillip’s claim.

            At one point, Ana Navarro, states of the Trump administration, that the Trump-Musk partnership has “been weird from the beginning, this is a fight between Godzilla and King Kong.”

            Leaving aside the discussion at the 9^th grade lunch table, this is a straightforward ad hominem fallacy (attacking the person rather than the position).

            Abby then states that even the CBO, which “is run by Republicans,” has stated that “even with [Trump’s projected] GDP increases, the bill will increase the debt by more than 1 trillion dollars over 10 years.”  It is great news that, after the disastrous Biden overspending, Phillip is suddenly worried about the debt, and though it is fair enough to cite CBO projections, the CBO has often been wrong.   That is, although there may be risks in Trump’s policy, we are also going to have to wait and see on this one.  The outcome will be determined by a lot of factors, Phillip’s crystal ball.

            Navarro chimes in that the CBO “is supposed to be non-partisan”.

 In logic texts this a called a “weasel word” fallacy.  The question is not what the CBO is “supposed” to be.  The question is what it is. 

            Daniel Koh, a former member of the disastrous Biden administration, informs us that “everyone has to pay their fair share”. 

            Thanks for the platitude, Daniel.  Unfortunately, without specifying a metric to determine what each person’s fair share is, that means NOTHING.  Please inform Obama!

            One could go on in the same vein about the rest of the discussion but we must move on to the main confrontation.

            This began when Phillip brought up the allegedly “surreal” answers “on DEI, the Holocaust, and race” given by Trump’s Education Secretary, Linda McMahon.  For, Phillip continues, McMahon “sounded uneducated on several issues … [W]hen [she was] grilled [in congress] over her DEI cuts, … [she] was asked [by Dem. Rep. Summer Lee, Pa. 12^th District], whether teaching African-American history is now illegal”.

            Rep. Lee’s and Phillip’s shared assumption here is a complete canard. Nothing Trump or McMahon have done has anything to do with making the teaching of African-American history “illegal.”  In order to do that, there has to be this thing called a “bill” passed by both Houses of Congress and signed into law by the president.  The question here is only whether the entire country should be forced to subsidize the widespread educational policy that at least half of the country view as leftist indoctrination.  What is proposed by Trump and McMahon is not making DEI illegal but merely ending taxpayer funding for this leftist scheme.  Hopefully the Left can eschew the hysterical theatrical language and address the dispute honestly.  Do not hold one’s breath!

            In her reply to Rep. Lee, McMahon answered, correctly, that social studies “should all be taught accurately” and that “we should hear all sides.”  Rep. Lee replied directly to McMahon that “I don’t know what both sides of African American history would be,” and, despite her statement on the CNN panel on 6/7/25 that “doing a better job of calling balls and strikes, on both sides … is important,” it was also too much for Phillip, who said, “What is the ‘other side’ of African American history?  Does anybody know.  I don’t?”

            Well, Phillip is certainly right that she doesn’t know, but it is not usual to trumpet one’s ignorance.

For, in fact, there is a great deal many people, including many Democrats, do not know about African-American history.  President Obama’s close friend, black Harvard Professor, Henry Louis Gates, makes this point explicitly, 

While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers … [in slavery], there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role … was a considerable one, … For many African-Americans, these facts can be difficult to accept.  Excuses run the gamut, …

Gates is referring precisely to the “other side” of African-American history that many leftists don’t tend to know and don’t want to know.

One part of this “other side” is that African-Americans were involved in slavery and held slaves, even white slaves, within the United States.  Anthony Johnson (@1600-1670), a black African who came to America as an indentured servant, as did many whites at the time, eventually bought his freedom, became wealthy, acquired 4 white slaves and one black slave.  Further, despite the fact that two white farmers had decided that John Casor, a black African indentured servant, had earned his freedom, Johnson went to court to argued that Casor should be declared indentured for life:  “This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the 13 colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life” (the first time literal lifelong slavery was made legal).  Thanks Anthony!

Another is when Phillip herself criticized Trump for denigrating diversity when, in fact, he was only denigrating a program titled “Diversity”.  That is a straightforward fallacy of equivocation (a fallacy of ambiguity that confuses actual real-world diversity with a program titled “Diversity”). 

Another is when, some time ago, Phillip claimed, referring to the 3/5^th compromise of 1787, that “The U.S. Constitution held that black people were only three-fifths of a person.”  This is a typical leftist canard and there is no excuse for it.  In fact, the 3/5^th compromise was an anti-slavery compromise against southern “slave states” that wanted to count slaves as part of their population, thereby giving them greater representation in the House of Representatives, while denying those slaves the right to vote.  The “3/5^th compromise” only allowed them to count a slave as 3/5^th of a person for that specific purpose, thereby reducing the political power of the southern “slave states” from what they wanted.  There is a name for this too.  It is called the “fallacy of amphiboly” (grammatical ambiguity).

            Phillip’s refusal to allow that there even is an “other side” to the discussion of African-American history is the insistence that the Left control the narrative completely.  As in all authoritarian regimes, one is not allowed to disagree with “the narrative.”  As Louis Gates notes, leftists have many “excuses”, many of them illustrated by Phillip’s discussion, not to permit a free and fair discussion.  For, appeal to that dogma is how many leftists base their sanctimony, earn their money and get their degrees.

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