*While addressing the series of shootings this week, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Friday said white Americans “don’t understand being black in America.”
“It took me a long time and a number of people talking to me over the years to begin to get a sense of this: If you are a normal, white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk,” the GOP pundit said while discussing race during a Facebook Live video with commentator Van Jones.
The discussion followed the police killing of black men Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, earlier this week, and the killing of five police officers in Dallas Thursday night by an African American man during a protest against the previous killings.
“We’ve got to rethink what it means to be American and how we function together as an extended family,” Gingrich said.
Jones said it was a signal of division in the country if one grew emotional this week over video of a black man bleeding out in a car but not over news of police officers killed, or vice-versa.
“When you’re one country and you’re one people, you cry at every funeral,” Jones said.
Watch below: