Racist Republican Stupidity, Part ...

(Photoillustration: courtesy of Keyanus Price, Orange County Register site)

Yet again, a conservative politician has stepped on his reproductive tackle by sending out a blatantly racist image drawing a connection between Barack Obama and watermelons.

Los Alamitos, CA (Orange County) Mayor Dean Grose sent the email to African-American city volunteer and businesswomen Keyanus Price:

"I have had plenty of my share of chicken and watermelon and all those kinds of jokes," Price told The Associated Press. "I honestly don't even understand where he was coming from, sending this to me. As a black person receiving something like this from the city-freakin'-mayor - come on."

The Orange County Register first reported the e-mail on its Web site Tuesday night.

Grose confirmed to the AP that he sent the e-mail to Price and said he didn't mean to offend her. He said he was unaware of the racial stereotype that black people like watermelons.

He said he and Price are friends and serve together on a community youth board.

"Bottom line is, we laugh at things and I didn't see this in the same light that she did," Grose told the AP. "I'm sorry. It wasn't sent to offend her personally - or anyone - from the standpoint of the African-American race."

Grose, who became mayor in December, said he sent an apology e-mail to Price and her boss and also left her a voicemail apology.

Regardless, Price said it will be difficult for the two to work together.

"Now I am like - wow, is this really how he feels?" Price said.

To be fair, Grose is not identified as Republican by the LWV, his own campaign website, or the Orange County Register election summary page. However, the latter source identifies his role model as:

Ronald Reagan, because of his ability to bring people together to resolve issues, his ability to accomplish things at an international level, and his conservative, fiscally sound management style

which certainly suggests (as does his residence in OC) a Republican leaning, at least.

Grose's office had a watermelon smashed on the doorstep yesterday morning, but because the building wasn't damaged, it wasn't considered vandalism

Grose issued a written apology to the City Council, Keyanus Price, and her boss:

I am deeply embarrassed in receiving your email, and for any harm or hurt that it may have caused. It was poor judgement on my part and was never intended to be offensive to Ms. Price, your company or anyone in the African American Community. I have exchanged emails with Ms. Price in the past.

I can fully understand your concerns and comments. Please be advised that I have left a voice mail for Ms. Price and will also be sending her a separate email with my apology. You can be assured that I will not allow this to happen again. I in no way was representing the City of Los Alamitos, or my role as a council member in sending this out and it went via my private business email. That doesn't justify the fact that it was sent, however, we gratefully appreciate the contributions that your company makes to our community and I wish to publically apologize to anyone within the firm or organization that may have been offended.

I am truly sorry.

Dean Grose

This is better than most racist GOP apologies. It doesn't include the phrase "anyone who may have been offended" or "if you were offended", but it does assure us that the image "was never intended to be offensive to Ms. Price, your company or anyone in the African American Community". That may just be that Grose (or his handlers) has taken a lesson from earlier racist GOP screwups (or maybe Rupert Murdoch).

(Photo: City of Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose, Los Alamitos web site)

If you want to contact Mayor Grose, here's his Facebook page. The Los Alamitos city page is here, with phone numbers and address at the bottom. And to save you the trouble of poking around the website, here's the email address they list: dgrose@ci.los-alamitos.ca.us.

h/t to Steven Barnes, who says:

My Conservative Republican friends: you have GOT to speak up about this, or lose your party. Right now, if is looking like your Big Tent is made out of a white sheet.

There's more...

Something's Happening Here...

(Cartoon by Sean Delonas for New York Post, Wednesday, February 18, 2009)

Something's Happening Here...

It is, to deliberately use the phrase, as simple as black and white.

When you refer to African-Americans as simians, you are being racist. When you refer to European-Americans in the same way, it's not.

For at least a thousand years, people from Africa were denied inclusion in the human family by the cultural, religious, and political institutions of Europe. Insisting Africans were "not entirely human" but some kind of ape-being was not the cause of racism. Racism, like all other oppressions, begins with power imbalance based on perceived survival struggle which eventually becomes widespread enough to infect every system of the human cultures where it is found. At that point, justifications and rationalizations are created to "explain" the lie. The portrayal of black people as monkeys is an ancient attempt to excuse treating them like animals.

Follow the power. If a man is compared to a barnyard animal, it may be offensive but it doesn't threaten the power flow because there is no institutionalized lie which implies it might be true. If a woman is compared to a barnyard animal, it is an attack backed by possible denial of access to power. Which is why I don't use bitch, chick, sow, or cow as terms for women, any more than I would use buck, junglebunny, rat, or vermin to refer to various non-white groups. There is, in my opinion, no "reclaiming" of such terminology while the power structure remains intact, no "subverting" the fact that we are all raised to think of the lie -- and the hate behind it -- first when we hear it used.

The association is there, whether we admit it or not. Even the depiction of two white police officers shooting a chimp (although, in this case, the drawing looks more like a gorilla, which I believe is deliberate because gorillas are more intimidating) would have an underlay of recognizable racism, because a solid percentage of the American population will think "black" when they see that ape. It's an easy, cheap association.

But when the line "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill" is the caption -- with the clear knowledge that our President wrote the current stimulus bill, and in fact a photograph of him doing so appears on the previous page of the same newspaper in which this so-called cartoon appeared -- then there is no arguing the intent of this drawing. The intent is to encourage feelings and thoughts of homicide against our President because he is an African-American daring to break free of his "animal" category, daring to assume economic leadership. Over white people.

I recommend reading BAGNewsNotes, who of course has their finger directly on the pulse. Also recommended is Jack and Jill Politics analysis in "The Connection Between Blacks As Apes And Police Brutality".

I also encourage us to think long-term about what this blatant display means. Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend does a consummate job of listing all the racism employed by Republicans and the Right during this last election cycle in her post The New York Post Makes Its Case For a Post-Racial America. It's true that this is business as usual for that crowd. But is also true that as the delusion of their supposed majority is revealed, and as they lose access to power, they will not go gentle in that good night. Their racism is, as Orcinus and Sara Robinson have repeatedly warned, becoming a daily danger, beyond even the threat of violence and death at the hands of cops that every person of color in this country knows on a gut level.

We cannot "nice" and hope this away. We cannot educate infected individuals and leave the system intact. This is not an issue of semantics or artistic freedom. This is a clarion clear call to war. We do not (and I hope will not) accept their terms of battle, but we must pay attention: When a major newspaper in our largest city prints a cartoon advocating the murder of "whoever wrote the stimulus bill", reducing him to an ape out of control, we are facing cultural revolution.

Something's happening here...

There's more...