Joy Reid, seasoned journalist and political commentator, was singled out by JD Vance, after he suggested she show a “little gratitude” for the country.
On Thursday (Oct 2), Vance took to X to respond to a clip of Reid discussing racism in the United States. The original video was taken in March, but was reposted by a conservative social media account this week. In the talk, Reid discusses that her parents got a “rude awakening” after immigrating to the United States.
“Joy Reid has had such a good life in this country. It’s been overwhelmingly kind and gracious to her. She is far wealthier than most. Yet she oozes with contempt.
My honest, non-trolling advice to Joy Reid is that you’d be a much happier person if you showed a little gratitude“
Reid responded to the tweet in a Substack post, expressing surprise that the Vice President would focus on her comments amid pressing national issues, such as the ongoing government shutdown. She also highlighted her immigrant mother’s experiences with racism and her own achievements as a testament to the opportunities available in America.
“Waking up… to the reality that the vice president of the United States deliberately put a target on you… is something,” Reid wrote on Threads.
In the substack she wrote:
“JD Vance is mad that I’m not sufficiently “grateful” to America. And to come to that conclusion, he reposted (with comment!) someone called End Wokeness, who pulled up a more than a year old clip of me in conversation with the great Ta-Nehisi Coates (it was a great conversation sponsored by Baldwin & Co. books, which you can find here) in which I talked about what my mother, Philomena, learned when she immigrated to this country in the early 1960s“
She noted that there is a popular ideology that Black people should be “grateful when they succeed” specifically from the right-wing.
“Just to be clear: I don’t feel the need to take advice, trolling or otherwise, from a man whose moral North Star is Curtis Yarvin. The idea that Black people owe ‘gratitude’ (to white people, presumably,’) when we succeed, is just the same old racist balderdash that we’re used to from the right.“
“Unlike JD, I need not be grateful that a billionaire, anti-democracy, white South African sugar daddy literally financed my entire path in business and in politics after an affirmative action stint at Yale, where his family’s Appalachian poverty helped make him an attractive addition to that school’s freshman class the year he got in. Unlike JD, I built my life and career the old fashioned way: on my own. Literally.”
The exchange between Reid and Vance follows previous feuds between the two, including a recent debate over affirmative action and elite college admissions.