Alabama State Rep. Joe Mitchell (D-Mobile) needs to find some kind of internal filter because it is not okay to refer to your white constituents’ ancestors as “slave-holding, murdering, adulterous, baby-raping, incestuous, snaggle-toothed, backward-a**ed, inbreed [sic], imported criminal-minded kin folk.”
State Rep. Mitchell was responded to a white constituent who wrote him in opposition to gun violence control laws. Mitchell suggested that the man’s kin never used guns to protect blacks, and that blacks would be happy to support the 2nd amendment “AFTER we [blacks] finish stocking up on spare parts, munitions and the like. Bring it. As one of my friends in the Alabama Senate suggested – “BRING IT!!!”
Needless to say, this is counterproductive in the extreme. It’s only made worse by the fact that state Rep. Mitchell copied the rest of the legislature on his replies.
It’s wrong on a whole host of levels. I doubt he sought permission to share this private email exchange. He was completely disrespectful. He picked at old scabs. He invited a race-war. And he gave a huge amount of ammunition to opponents of gun violence control. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
Update [2013-3-28 11:26:43 by BooMan]: The original constituent letter was addressed to the whole legislature, so Rep. Mitchell was at least justified in sharing his response with the whole legislature.
And giving Fox several days worth of obnoxious “reporting”. It will be a feast for the base.
Great. This is going to be a staple example for right wing discussions of racism for the next 10 years and more.
It depends on how well Rep. Mitchell knew who his constituents’ ancestors were.
It is always interesting to see the vapors among white liberals whenever black politicians respond in kind to Southern nitwits.
He is not inviting a race war. The whole nonsense about Second Amendment remedies is a code-word for being able to do once again what the Ku Klux Klan did in the 1870s and 1880s to “restore home rule”. The government that whites want to defend themselves from is the government that grants equal rights to blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, and all other previously non-privileged people. Meanwhile it still is open season on young black males. And not just in the South. And increasingly from police pistols. He is not inviting a race war; he is saying that this time black people will not be without arms. This is the political reality that wimpy Democrats and a flaccid Department of Justice has produced in this country. Before dealing with gun violence (the symptom), folks who want to see good sense have to deal with the cultural nonsense that has been allowed to metastasize through white liberal niceness.
It was a response to a bully, and apparently the bully did not like the response.
If you want stupid, stupid, stupid, try Rahm Emmanuel’s evisceration of the Chicago Public School system. That is going to hurt hundreds of thousands of kids. Alabama Rep. Mitchell’s comments will have little effect beyond controversy.
Black politicians are not obligated to endure forever racist insults from people who probably never will ever vote for them without response.
If you want stupid, stupid, stupid, try Rahm Emmanuel’s evisceration of the Chicago Public School system.
And who is hurt most by that stupid?
100,000 students
I know that. I meant that POC are most hurt by Rahmbo’s plan.
Of course. If they don’t voluntarily move out of the City, how can Rahm peform his magic of gentrification? After all, he’s the mayor, not the emergency manager. I’m surprised Rick Snyder didn’t hire Rahm to manage Detroit.
The vapors?
I spend how much time bitching about white racism towards blacks?
This knucklehead made a big mistake and he needs to be called on it so that people don’t get the idea that it’s okay to use a constituent letter about guns as an excuse to invite whites to have gun battle with blacks.
Here’s the original letter:
That hardly warranted the response he received.
The man threatened the legislator with a charge of a class C felony just because the legislator introduced a bill controlling guns. And you expect the legislator to respond in a dignified manner? And back off from his legislation? Because no doubt the author of that letter would have pursued trying to get that black legislator thrown out of office quietly and and hit with a felony charge had there been no pushback.
This is not just face-value correspondence between a supposed constituent and his representative, BooMan. This is a matter of intimidation. By blowing it up in the media, all of the Representative’s constituents now know that he is under legal attack for introducing gun control legislation.
This ain’t the American League, Smokey.
Remember that the conservative’s position on gun control is not a principled stand. They were perfectly willing to throw the Second Amendment out the window when the Black Panthers were active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That was was Nixon’s law and order campaign was about. Federal-state suppression of the Black Panthers was complete by 1975 and the law-and-order folks turned to trying to ban Saturday Night Specials exactly at the point that the rightwing took over the National Rifle Association.
The legislator is really making a sophisticated point that the letter-writer is indeed too dumb to grasp unless the intent is that white have guns and blacks don’t.
Given the threat the letter-writer made of a felony charge, the legislator is under no obligation to respond with courtesy. At this point it is about who can rally the most folks to his side. The legislator has not hurt his case at all with his constituents.
amen.
I swear, if, at every major gun show around the country, you had 50 buses of Black folks getting off and coming in, laws would change justlikethat.
OK, his response was, um…intemperate.
On the other hand, I grew up not far from Mobile. While one can fault his lack of discretion, one must award him points for accuracy.
I looked up the picture of the gentleman.
that he didn’t snap before should be the shock.
Yeah, he can call us all that, but when I call him what he is; that being an asshole nigger, I get called a racist bigot.
Fuck him and his people.
Just sayin’….
Now block me like the intolerant fascists that you fucking are.
NEXT!
huh?
I encountered more white anti-black racism in the Detroit suburbs than in any place I have ever been in the north, but I didn’t find them to be all that inbred, actually. And the baby-raping? Not so much.
I bet he’d never say that shit to any white guys face.