On MSNBC "The Cycle" Thursday, co-host Touré suggested that Republican contender Mitt Romney was using "racial coding" about President Obama to "access some really deep stereotypes about the angry black man."
"I know it's a heavy thing, I don't say it lightly, but this is 'n---erization,'" said Touré, the only African-American among the show's four panelists. "You are not one of us, you are like the scary black man who we've been trained to fear."
Romney's supposed racial coding? Saying Obama should take his "campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago."
Conservative co-host S.E. Cupp said it was in fact Vice President Joe Biden who injected race into the campaign when he told a racially mixed audience in Virginia this week that Republicans were "going to put you back in chains." She said Touré was insinuating that Romney was "something of a racist" and that the Republican base was racist as well.
"Just so I have this straight," said Cupp. "Joe Biden makes a racially charged comment, which you, and many others on the left called divisive. Mitt Romney comes out, calls that comment divisive. But because he used the word angry, now his is the racially charged comment? Do you see how dishonest that is?"
Touré denied calling Romney racist, but said Republican presidential candidates have a history of using racially coded language to appeal to white voters.
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