Mississippi State Senator Called "Ole Nigger" in Email

Really? Has it come to this? Highlights below and thanks to BlackPoliticsontheWeb.com and BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Blacks in the small, Mississippi Delta city of Greenwood are seething over a white city councilman's e-mail that referred to a black political leader, who is highly respected statewide, as an "ole nigger."
[...]
Since Sunday, when the e-mail -- exposed by one of the 15 whites who received it -- and its subsequent furor began attracting statewide national media attention, Greenwood and Leflore County, where it sits, has been bombarded by reactions in the city's newspapers and its talk radio stations.

The e-mail, which Jordan said "is shocking," was sent early last week by John Lee, one of the city's two white Republican councilmen. Since then, Lee has increasingly been scorned and heaped with disdain and contempt by the vast majority of Greenwood's African-American population, according to several residents who asked for anonymity before speaking with BlackAmericaWeb.com. Many blacks are also believed to hold an equal amount of contempt for the other white councilman, John Jennings, who continues to defend the embattled Lee.

In his e-mail, Lee alleged that he "had a long talk after the city council meeting ... with David Jordan. The ole nigger can't understand why the black's (sic) continue to shoot one another. I told him he needed to spend less time with the old people at the Voters League and more time with the young people about getting an education."

Lee's e-mail erroneously claims that Jordan missed an opportunity to help a "big black" who asked him for employment. In fact, according to an outraged Jordan, he had previously employed the young man during several election cycles.

The young man, Lee claimed, told Jordan that he is a rapper. "I told David he missed his chance. He should have told that black boy he should be in school getting his education in order to have a future." Jordan said the "black boy" is a 28-year-old man."

An outraged Jordan, who is also president of the Greenwood Voters League, the political engine which has propelled blacks to growing representation and power since the 1960s, told BlackAmericaWeb.com that "Lee's lying and fabricated a story" which has no factual foundation.

They Need Less Stupid

Michael Goldfarb is shocked, shocked that a political candidate would diversify the background at a campaign appearance to portray a particular message:

The Obama campaign discriminates against people of color, and their own supporters no less, in what is presumably a misguided pander to white voters. Very strange, but perhaps Obama's candidacy really has transcended race in America (surely this is a first). Alternatively, the campaign may just plan to stage-manage it out of public view.

Nothing quite showcases the misguided sense of victimhood some folks on the Right have than viewing this as "discrimination." These folks view any kind of racial identification as in and of itself "racist" with no sense of proportion whatsoever. After all, what's the difference between tailoring a background to make a candidate look good and and an eyewitness wrongly identifying a suspect because they think all black folks look alike? It's all "discrimination" after all.

Goldfarb and others are notably uninterested in racial discrimination in any context that has the potential to affect people's lives, unless of course they themselves feel discriminated against. Here the lack of proportion comes into play, as in: Academia's alleged leftward tilt is the same thing as the Taliban.

Of course, Goldfarb would have defended as "inclusive" rather than pandering, the invitation of a Gospel Choir to the Republican convention in 2000. It's positively naive to think other politicians don't do the same thing ALL THE TIME, but it only matters here because Obama is black, and so in this context it is seen as somehow unethical. Conversely, the Bush Administration screening out dissenters at campaign rallies isn't discrimination, it's "freedom".

What it is, completely and utterly, is trivial. Expect to see another 3000 articles this week on Obama "discriminating against his own supporters". Only in America can a black man be accused of being a radical Christian and a radical Muslim and of hating white people and black people at the same time.

BONUS: McCain discriminating against his white supporters at his MLK speech:



What a racist!

Open Thread: Ann Coulter and Other Republicans Compare Obama to Hitler

I almost sprained my brain on this one. This is how the Republicans plan to take down Obama? By calling him racist and comparing him to Adolf Hitler? Media Matters has all the deets. WOW. They really are desperate.

COLMES: Why are you calling him a racist?

COULTER: Because we -- the topic we were supposed to be talking about in this segment, Sean -- my column this week. I'm the only person in America who has read Obama's autobiography --

COLMES: You know, as a matter of fact --

COULTER: -- and all he has a racial hair-trigger, he's a complete loon. All he talks about is constantly being offended. And Mr. Unity attacks Sean Hannity and me.

COLMES: All right, you said in your piece --

[crosstalk]

COULTER: -- and now we're offended.

HANNITY: Me and you in the same sentence --

COLMES: Hold on, we only have a second left. You said, if only -- you might want to take a peek at Obama and what he writes -- "if only people had read 'Mein Kampf' ... "

COULTER: Yeah.

COLMES: So in other words, he would be as dangerous as Hitler?

COULTER: No. He's a dimestore Mein Kampf.

COLMES: Oh, he's a two-bit Hitler?

COULTER: But yes. It is absolute racialist. If you read Mein Kampf --

COLMES: I see.

COULTER: -- it's all about his Germanic heritage. And this is -- OK, go read it. If you don't believe me --

COLMES: All right, I see.

COULTER: -- you want to read the CliffsNotes version in my column.

COLMES: We should be as wary of Obama as they should have been of Hitler in Nazi Germany?

COULTER: If only people had read Mein Kampf.

Ummmm. What do you think?

The Amazing Racism of Pat Buchanan. Be Not Surprised

Many of you have written in or posted comments about Pat Buchanan's crazy ass comments that black Americans should be grateful to white folks for bringing us (via slavery, of course) to America and Jesus and welfare.

Rather than tackle this stupidness, I pass the mic to Ta-Nehisi Coates. Excerpt

There is a lot wrong here, but one central thread of errant logic undergirds it all. Buchanan, like most racists, doesn't actually believe that African-Americans are Americans. This isn't an interpretation, Buchanan's argument that white Americans, in the form of social programs, have done more for black people than any group (including presumably the entire Civil Rights Movement!) assumes that black people have never paid any taxes for those programs. He quite literally doesn't categorize black people as Americans, but useless layabouts who've never contributed anything to the country. All those charities that Buchanan lays out, presumably none of them were run by black folks.

It goes without saying that Buchanan ignores Jim Crow, the epoch of lynching and housing discrimination. That's what bigots do. And Buchanan's rhetoric shouldn't make us angry. He's always been a racist. That said, it's always frustrating to see rank neanderthals, half-wits, and fools making the argument that black people should be thankful to them. Intellectually, Pat Buchanan can't carry Barack Obama's unwashed boxers--from last week. I just got done jogging down Lenox Ave and passed no less than five brothers that would smash Buchanan in any debate.

Continue to the full post

Obama's Latest Defenders: Mike Huckabee and Fox's Chris Wallace?

Ain't politics beautiful?

Huckabee, despite his scary demands for amending the Constitution, can be such a reasonable, likable fellow.