Sunny Hostin just told America that Black people still cannot get a driver’s license because of slavery. Sit with that. A millionaire lawyer on daytime television looked into a camera and decided the descendants of people who survived chains, Jim Crow, and the long march to the ballot box are somehow too broken to stand in line at the DMV. Slavery ended in 1865.
The last living person who could have been born into it is long gone. What Hostin actually said on The View in April 2025 was that poor people do not have cars or licenses, and that asking for identification to vote is a “vestige of post-slavery laws.” The meme compressed it.
The insult did not need compressing. She was arguing against voter ID, and the only way her side can sell that argument is to pretend ordinary Black Americans cannot do what every liquor store, airport, bank, pharmacy, and job application already requires. Black families own cars. Black teenagers pass the road test.
Black voters fly, cash checks, buy a beer, and pick up prescriptions. The soft bigotry is the point. If you tell a community it is permanently crippled by history, you get to keep managing that community. You also get to block the SAVE Act, which the House already passed, while the Senate stalls. Hostin later guessed only five states require an ID to vote. She was corrected on her own set. It is about three dozen. She still reached for the jelly-bean jar. That is not history. That is a talking point designed to keep the rolls loose.