National Rifle Association board member and conservative columnist Ted Nugent claimed that African-Americans must “admit to the self-inflicted destructo-derby they are waging” in order to honestly celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Nugent, who recently became Outdoor Channel's spokesman, made this claim in his regular column for birther website WND. In a column titled, “What Would Dr. King Say About Black Culture?” Nugent sought to tie a viral video of a 2-year-old Omaha, Nebraska toddler being cursed at by adults to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which is on January 20:
A truly disturbing and disgusting profanity-laced video of a 2-year-old little boy made national headlines recently after the Omaha Police Union posted the video on its website.
The street thugs who made the video and the little boy are black. This is important to note as the nation gets ready to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Jan. 20.
Nugent cited this single example of bad parenting as “the tip of the black gangster iceberg” and suggested that "[s]hould the boy ever be reunited with his family of gangsters, he will either end up in prison like his grandparents or dead like his dad."
Returning to his frequently made claim that Democrats act as slave masters to African-Americans, Nugent again indicted African-American culture with the claim that, "[t]o honestly celebrate the legacy of Dr. King, black America would have to admit to the self-inflicted destructo-derby they are waging and begin to tell their liberal Democratic slave drivers to take a hike."
Nugent's frequent commentary on African-American culture is just one facet of his racially inflammatory rhetoric, which has included support for racial profiling and ugly comments about deceased Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. In a July 2013 column for WND, Nugent wrote that the African-American community has a “mindless tendency to violence.” He has also suggested that the “the black problem” could be fixed if African-Americans put “heart and soul into being honest, law-abiding, [and] delivering excellence at every move in your life.” Following the acquittal of George Zimmerman on charges he murdered Martin, Nugent speculated that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “is rolling over in his grave that he sacrificed his life for the cause of judging people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, as so many of his own race carry in in self-destructive behavior while professional race mongers blame everything on racism.”
Despite his attacks on the African-American community, Nugent has compared himself to civil rights heroes, recently claiming that he is “Rosa Parks with a Gibson.”