Nick Cannon sparks backlash as he claims Democrats are ‘the party of the KKK’

Former America’s Got Talent host Nick Cannon has come under fire on social media this week, over comments he made about the Ku Klux Klan and the Democratic Party.

In an episode of his online show Nick Cannon’s Big Drive released on Friday, Cannon was told by model and actor Amber Rose that she was a former liberal and Democrat before being part of the Republican Party.

She said: “Democrats don’t care about Black people. They don’t care about people of colour, and the Republicans do, and that’s the misconception.”

“You know what? I agree with you 100 per cent,” Cannon replied. “People don’t know that the Democrats is [sic] the party of the KKK. People don’t know that the Republicans are the party that freed the slaves.”

The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which stated that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”, was indeed passed under a Republican president: Abraham Lincoln.

However, academics point to a ‘switch’ in the two parties’ positions on civil rights in the 20th century (typically the 1960s), with Steven White of New York’s Syracuse University writing for the London School of Economics in 2023 that “Democrats, formerly the party of the white South, became the party of northern white liberals and Black voters”, while “Republicans, once the party of emancipation and Reconstruction, became the party of most southern whites”.

And this bit of history is what X/Twitter users highlighted in response to Cannon’s remarks, when they were shared by the account Pop Base on Saturday:

“I learned the parties switched sides in 8th grade,” one account commented:

Podcaster @BibsCorner said the comments are “like the lowest level of political thought”:

While socialist democrat @LeftyWinter said she “can’t believe people still think like this”:

Cannon has been approached by indy100 for comment.

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