Unfortunately, I could probably post an example from somewhere nearly every week and some weeks almost every day but this latest racist “joke” making the rounds among bigots is too egregious to ignore. It was sent by Sherri Goforth, who is a legislative aide for Republican State Senator Diane Black of Tennessee.
When Nashville is Talking spoke to Goforth, who confirmed she emailed the offensive picture, and asked if she understood the controversy she said:
“I went on the wrong email and I inadvertently hit the wrong button. I’m very sick about it, and it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back.”
When given a second chance to apologize, she repeated the above. Me, I’m wondering about the “wrong button” part. What, she thought she was clicking on Delete when she was really attaching it to her list of contacts and clicking Forward? Yeah, we all make that mistake.
She told Nashville is Talking she’s gotten a written reprimand but will stay on the job. Unfortunately.
Related post on From Scratch: Quote of the Month, Feb 09
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh MAN! and I thought the gorilla/Michelle/relatives thing was enough for one week.
I read the article, and it seems her regrets were focused upon having sent it to the “wrong” list. Who’s on the “right” list? On taxpayer time and equipment?
Exactly, Muse!!
And I am just enough of a skeptic (cynic?) to think when these things happen the primary regret is having been caught.
This cartoon left me with a sick feeling in my stomach. Our President is the best thing that has happened to this country in a decade, and people are still refusing to think, or see the person behind the stereotype. We have become such a multicultural country in the past twenty years. Yet, I still get emails passed on by my cousin from her friends in Florida, that are racist and sickening in the extreme. People are now equal opportunity haters. I have very little hope for our future if this continues.
I understand your concern, lechat, but I have a feeling that a bigot’s a bigot, a racist is a racist and someone’s skin color, ethnicity or religion will always be paramount to those people. If Obama solved every problem on earth they would not give him credit, they would not see past what they hate. I know that sounds awfully pessimistic, but life has not given me any evidence — yet — to think otherwise.
A few things:
1) I don’t know what to say about the cartoon…. Words can’t describe it. I can’t believe it exists. (Side note: I would at least get an ironic chuckle out of the cartoon if Andrew Johnson was depicted as wearing a halo or something of that sort – he was our most racist president. Then again, that might just sicken me more)
2) That said, I still distrust Obama (no, not because he’s black, people!). I just distrust anyone holding major political offices – and especially one who can do whatever he wants with his Democratic majority in Congress (but… the people voted him in order to advance the Democratic agenda, so I can’t really complain. It’s democracy in action).
3) I have hope that racism will go away – there are many born after the Civil Rights Movement that truly cannot comprehend the idea of racism (like myself). Now if we could get rid of the bigotry imposed on gays and those belonging to different religious creeds, or those who have no creed at all. Sadly, I have much less hope for that to happen.
Hi, leap! Excellent points. #1 – I’ll be giggling about AJ and the halo for hours. By the same token, I’m surprised they didn’t plaster an “Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve” bumper sticker over Buchanan’s face.
#2 – I understand that distrust of people in high office. I think millions feel the same way.
#3 – For the most part, I agree about young adults who can’t fathom why someone’s color or sexual preference is even an issue. I think that’s fabulous, but to a degree it depends where one is. I know teens and young adults here in NH who make Archie Bunker sound PC. And where do they learn it? At home and from their peers. Sad.
I think one of the best things Obama frequently does is to include people of no faith when he speaks. He did it again at the D-Day observance and it was a very natural mention and, I thought, quite appropriate.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Let me see if I can make sense here…
On my trip to Mississippi, I mixed comfortably with people of every race, and certainly there were more Blacks around than I generally bump up against in daily life. Everyone seemed comfortable, and when I mentioned it to someone he said, “There ain’t no black or white in the blues.”
I’ve since heard that same phrase several times. It occurs to me part of the reason may be that when the Blues is the focus -something “outside” everyone – the shared interest is more important than the differences among people.
A good bit of the lingering racism in our country might – just might, mind you – be a result of folks feeling as though they have no shared interest with those who are different. When blacks and whites understand the welfare of our nation trumps human variation, President Obama may have less of this to content with.
shoreacres´s last blog ..Blues Traveling
Hi, Shore. Good points and it’s worth remembering music, especially the blues, has long been a melting pot, even when segregation was at its height. (Of course there were times when they would play together at night but were unable or unwilling to have breakfast together in the morning.) Your comments reminded me of a fabulous piece I linked to in January in a Good Reads post called Disconnected From Obama’s America, about the racism and bigotry (2 very different things) in rural Arkansas. I think you’d enjoy it immensely.
While not categorizing individuals, I think it’s hard to deny that as regions the South and Ozarks are far less accepting and tolerant of diversity than, say, the Northeast. And diversity includes ideas and beliefs as well as people. I won’t say the electoral map bears that out because I think it’s the other way round — it is borne out in the electoral map.
Thanks for your comments and I hope you’ll have a few minutes to read that article. It’s from the Washington Post.
Excellent article, and I did enjoy it, at least partly because it was an even-handed look at a region that often finds itself satirized or portrayed in cartoonish fashion.
Strangely, I ended up reading it less as an article about racism/bigotry than about regional isolation and the gaps between urban and rural cultures. Geography can be destiny, too – or at least a significant factor in the way lives progress. Familiarity may breed contempt, but sometimes it breeds comfort and acceptance. When I moved from my little all-white Iowa town to my first job and apartment in Kansas City, I moved into an environment where my neighbors included an old black man who played saxophone on the steps at night, some Korean greengrocers with minimal ability to speak English and a pair of transvestites upstairs who worked over at the Jewel Box on Troost – a true neighborhood landmark
I came to enjoy my new environment, and began to value diversity.
Another huge difference implied in the article is the gap between those who still produce some “thing” (cars, a crop, a clean house) and those who shuffle bits and bytes around in cyberspace. If you’re making a car, you know in the end whether it’s attractive, whether it runs, and whether it lives up to its advertised hype. You also find out pretty quickly if anyone is buying what you have to sell.
If you’re speculating in the markets, moving commodities,or managing funds, there can be something “unreal” about it – with a consequent loss of accountability, responsibility or guilt when actions lead to very real loss for very real, if somewhat less sophisticated, people.
All that said, I think there’s no question the internet already has begun to overcome geographical isolation and provide the exposure to the “other” that I had to move to KC to find. When I stopped by the Onward store on my Mississippi trip, in the very heart of the Delta emptiness, what did I find? A fellow in the front of the store with a Dr. Pepper and a laptop, checking commodity prices, and a kid in the back with another laptop, doing a research project on Japanese anime. Hello, world.
Didn’t mean to turn this into another post, but gosh – you’re the one who sent me over to that article!
shoreacres´s last blog ..Blues Traveling
I’m glad you enjoyed it, shore, and the Post would never do a straight news story in any other way.
I’ll have to re-read it for the “thing” aspect, which I don’t recall at all and I’m not sure I ever got that impression. What I remember most from it is the comment by someone that some of the the blacks were “uppity” after the election. Holy smokes, every American of a certain age knows the vile two-word phrase that starts with “uppity.”
I really think young people are our best hope for change in this respect, whether it’s racism, anti-semitism or any other ism. I don’t believe it’s realistic to expect change from most people who have spent half a century or more using pejoratives to refer to or describe people different from themselves. I’d love events to prove me wrong, but I won’t bet my favorite chef’s knife.
Ella, this is so interesting. On the one hand, you didn’t pick up at all on what I took away in terms of urban/rural contrasts, etc. And I just went back and re-read the piece three times, because I felt like such a schmuck for missing the “uppity” business. But, it isn’t there.
What is there is a mention of a “newly emboldened” attitude among Blacks after Obama’s election, but in context it didn’t seem derogatory in the slightest (to me) and I passed right over it.
What a good reminder that we all read with different filters! I must say I appreciated the article more after a couple of re-reads. It’s gotten tucked in my files now.
shoreacres´s last blog ..Blues Traveling
Oh, I got the rural contrast, but not the “making things” aspect, but my previous comment is what I get for writing from memory. “Uppity” is indeed how I translate the code of “newly emboldened” and said so in my post. This is what I wrote – I italicized those two words:
Yes, we do filter differently — POV again! Thanks for giving me another one.