Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Otay

Lawmaker Calls Black Activist "Buckwheat"

A white state lawmaker in a runoff election called a black civil-rights veteran who had helped her campaign "Buckwheat," angering the NAACP, which urged voters to kick her out of office.

Rep. Carla Blanchard Dartez, a Democrat, acknowledged that she ended a Thursday night conversation with Hazel Boykin by saying, "Talk to you later, Buckwheat." Dartez had been thanking Boykin for driving voters to the polls.

Buckwheat, a black child character in the "Little Rascals" comedies of the 1930s and '40s, is viewed as a racial stereotype.

Boykin, 75, helped desegregate restaurants and the parish school system in the 1960s. Her son, Jerome, is president of the Terrebonne Parish chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"I've never had no one talk to me that way, and I considered it a racial slur," Hazel Boykin said. "I know the meaning of it; it's just like the N-word."

On Monday, Jerome Boykin held a news conference asking voters to cast ballots against Dartez, who faces Republican Joe Harrison in Saturday's runoff.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where is the love?

Anonymous said...

I grew up reading the classics and was so eager to become an adult and spread my wings and meet fellow human beings similar to the wonderful characters I met in the interesting classics I read.

I find it incredulous that people are so low minded and seem to have such ugliness woven into the fabric of their being. They can't seem to bring their minds up any futher than to try and say something silly about someone else, or try and put them down in someway.

"Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks" Proverbs...

This is a pity. (For the speaker I mean)

It is amazing to see how corrupt people have allowed themselves to become towards others.

Too bad for the politician. It would have been nice to see her as profound and upon a pedestal so to speak.

The fellow human beings I was eager to meet similar to the characters in the classics?

Truly, they are few, a precious few and very far between. And I am so fortunate to know them.

Anonymous said...

This is a pity. (For the speaker I mean)


To clarify, I was referring to the politician.

Kate-A said...

Yes, it is. Maybe the speaker suffers from that "dumbed down" American syndrome. She may have thought she was being cutesy funny. Poor judgment ... a lot of that going around these days.

Anonymous said...

Dartez lacked the maturity, integrity and courage required to apologize on the spot to Boykin, no matter what manner of thinking prompted her to insert her anti-statesman foot in her mouth.

Anonymous said...

Dartez has the maturity, integrity and courage required to apologize on the spot to Boykin. She called her back right after and appologized realizing that Boykin was offened.Boykin said nothing about that because her story would have not been so dramatic if she would have said that Carla had apologized. Many of the things said were made up to make the situation way worse than what it really was. I know Carla very well and she did not mean to sound offensive at all. This whole thing was a misunderstanding. Everything now days are exaggerated and changed to make better headlines. And if you really think about it and be honest with yourself you would of never thought Buckwheat to be a racial slur.

Kate-A said...

Sir or madam,
To be honest, on my planet, being called "Buckwheat" has always been considered a slur in our family.

It's little different than the idiot Imus using "nappy-headed ..."

Apology or not, chirping "I'll see you later Buckwheat" to a 75 y/o Black supporter shows Daretz lacks good sense.

Anonymous said...

To be honest, everybody needs to just get a life.

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