Joy Reid Says National Divorce Would Leave African Americans in Red States ‘Trapped in an Apartheid Hellscape’

Joy Reid made a dark prediction about the fate of Republican-leaning states should the country go through a national divorce. 

The MSNBC television personality said on her show, The ReidOut, that red states would be “trapped in an apartheid hellscape” comparable to a “pre-13th Amendment” country.

The 13th Amendment made slavery and involuntary servitude illegal

Reid’s monologue followed comments from Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who earlier this week suggested the nation could benefit if it could “separate by red states and blue states” and reduce the size of the federal government.

Reid said that Greene’s statements were not only “foolish” but “disastrous” because America is not politically divided “by state but by county.” She said “red state people” had a “fetish for secession” and did not understand the economic implications – arguing that the states that are most dependent on the federal government are all Republican-voting states.

Reid further contends Republicans are experiencing an intellectual collapse and used the federal government to ban what makes them uncomfortable, such as drag shows. She said that “conservatives don’t have the confidence that their ideas can be sold on the basis of presenting them just as ideas” and compared conservatives to “religious missionaries who use torture as their form of conversion” – warning that African American people would suffer if the county broke apart.

“First of all, the last time southerners like Marj proposed a national divorce it was because they were holding 4 million African Americans hostage as slaves and they didn’t want to let them go,” Reid said. “Today, half of African Americans still live in the 11 southern states that comprised the Confederacy, so if this national divorce happens, they would be trapped in an apartheid hellscape of a new country with zero healthcare, crappy public schools, barely a right to vote and a full return to ownership by someone else of their bodies except this time, it wouldn’t just be Black women. It would be all women.” 

According to Fox News, Reid compared Greene to Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis in January. 

Reid has repeatedly invoked apartheid when denouncing public figures or conservative states.

In April of 2022, Reid implied technology entrepreneur Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter to “restore the white supremacy of Apartheid-era South Africa,” per Reason.

“The enjoyment they get out of being in this ‘town square’ is being able to harass people, being able to attack people. … Elon Musk, I guess he misses the old South Africa in the ’80s, I guess he wants that back,” Reid said on her show. 

In July of 2021, Reid called Texas an “apartheid state ruled by a far-right White minority.” The on-air personality was responding to an article from The Texas Tribune that said Texas was one of five “minority states” in the nation because the 2011 census indicated 55.2% of the state’s population is non-Hispanic White. 

Earlier that month, Reid had said that “Republicans are waging an all-out war for power that’s increasingly based on the Trump Cult and White Nationalism. They’re doing it believing it will move White Voters. Look no further than the ongoing hysteria over ‘race-conscious’ education,” per Hannity.com.

Reid said “wealthy white Christian” Americans would implement apartheid to maintain power while speaking to a group of educators in September of 2019, per The Blaze.

“No country is an eternal democracy. Democracy is extremely fragile, and multiracial democracy is so fragile, we’re practically the only one that’s pulled it off,” said Reid. “This is a very difficult thing to maintain. And when you have a very determined minority, in this case wealthy white men and wealthy, white Christian men and Christian Americans who are of the fundamentalist variety, who are very clear that no matter what happens, if they have to pull the South Africa model to maintain power forever, they will do it.”

“And they’re not afraid of it, and they’re increasingly open about it,” she added. “And Donald Trump is merely the avatar for this. He didn’t create it, he simply benefited from it.”

Prior to the 2020 launch of her current show, Reid hosted “AM Joy” on MSNBC which aired on weekend mornings. Her columns have been published by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Miami Herald, New York Magazine and The Daily Beast. She also co-owns a documentary film production company with her husband.