United States Senator Tom Cotton is receiving criticism for his comments which many say is an attempt to justify the slavery of African Americans. The senator for the state of Arkansas said, US founders viewed slavery as a “necessary evil upon which the union was built.”

Cotton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he rejects the idea that the US was a systemically racist country to its core and emphasized on the study of slavery in the US. He said, “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country”.

“As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as [Abraham] Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction,” he added.

Cotton introduced the Saving American History Act on Thursday, which aims at banning federal funding for a New York Times project, ‘1619’, which bases US history teaching around the first arrivals of slave ships in the US in August of that year.

‘1619’ had won the Pulitzer prize for commentary for its founder, New York Times journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones but has faced criticisms from many US conservatives as an attempt to shift focus from American independence to slavery. Cotton called the project a “left-wing propaganda and said, “The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project… is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable.”

He added, “I reject that root and branch. America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”

Responding to Cotton’s remarks, Hannah said in a tweet that justification of slavery means justifying other crimes. To this Cotton responded saying, “Describing the *views of the Founders* and how they put the evil institution on a path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln, is not endorsing or justifying slavery.”

The comments from Cotton come in the wake of wide spread Black Lives Matter protests in the US, triggered by the custodial death of African American George Floyd. Cotton has been an open critic of the protests, describing them as “orgy protests” in an opinion piece for the New York Times. The piece was heavily criticised resulting in an apology from the newspaper and a resignation from Opinion editor James Bennet.