I recently told someone that I read sports and technology stories but only glance at the headlines for most political ones, so I didn't think much about the CA Education Secretary telling a girl upon being asked that her name means "stupid, dirty girl" and then immediately apologizing for the comment. Obviously a politician with no media savvy making a horrible, playful joke.
Well, upon further review I discovered the CA NAACP immediately scheduled a protest and called for his resignation, asking the question: "Would he have done that to a white girl?"
The answer: yes, yes he would. See the child he made this comment to was white, blond, and blue-eyed. After discovering this, the protest was cancelled.
So what does this event teach us about the NAACP? First, that when a person is called stupid and dirty the NAACP assumes it must be a black person that is being talked about. Second, they have no qualms about a white person being called stupid and dirty.
At least this ill-timed and humorless joke has managed to teach the public a little about race relations in America.
Posted by boo at July 11, 2004 04:51 PMErrrr... not that I have thought too much about Technorati, nor am I / we bitter that no member blog has ever linked to a KissaBoo post, but the system seems more and more worthless each time I look at it.
When searching for NAACP stories, the Kerry article's from yesterday are very popular, but I can't find one link/article about the CA story - NOT EVEN A LINK TO THIS VERY POST! And as I write this, it is fresher than the last 7 days. What good exactly is the search feature on Technorati? Someone should develop a website that actually searches and indexes weblog articles... that would be nifty.
Posted by: boo at July 16, 2004 01:37 PM