News anchor Tom Brokaw slammed for saying Hispanics should ‘work harder at assimilation’

NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw has faced criticism for comments he made about Hispanic people during a “Meet the Press” appearance.

The anchor — who faced sexual harassment allegations last year by three different women — was discussing immigration and how Americans could be brought together on the subject.

He said:

A lot of this we don’t want to talk about but the fact is on the Republican side, a lot of people see the rise of an extraordinary important new constituency in American politics — Hispanics, who will come here and all be Democrats.

I hear when I push people a little harder, ‘I don’t know whether I want brown grand babies’. That’s also a part of it. It’s the intermarriage that’s going on and the cultures that are conflicting with each other.

Finally, in a remark that has been viewed as particularly controversial, Brokaw said he also happens to believe that “the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation”.

That’s one of the things that I’ve been saying for a long time, you know, that they ought not to be just codified in their communities but make sure that all of their kids are learning to speak English and that they feel comfortable in the communities.

And that’s going to take outreach on both sides, frankly.

PBS correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, who was also on the panel, refuted these comments straight afterwards, but the real backlash came when Brokaw’s comments hit social media. After being called a “xenophobe” and “racist”, Brokaw took to Twitter to apologise.

Though many social users were not convinced by the tweets.

H/T: NYpost

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