Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) was trying to do some minority outreach, which he must realize will be essential if he has any hope of winning a second six-year term in 2016.
“I want to make sure we have elected people constantly looking at helping the African-American community,” Kirk said. “With this state and all of its resources, we could sponsor a whole new class of potential innovators like George Washington Carver and eventually have a class of African-American billionaires. That would really adjust income differentials and make the diversity and outcome of the state much better so that the black community is not the one we drive faster through.”
That kind of landed with a thud, though, didn’t it?
Would any of you kids like to raise your hands and tell the senator where he went wrong?
Going from Barack Obama to Mark Kirk as my senator has been beyond depressing.
Where did Kirk go wrong? Everywhere, Katie.
I just noticed the title of this piece. This was a total fail, from start to finish. No partial credit for Kirk.
just wait til the entire country goes from Obama to hillary.
talk about a downgrade.
Driving through constituents is probably always a bad idea, especially if one has a large vehicle.
I’m sure the average low income African-American considers that a shortage of black billionaires is what’s keeping him/her down.
OTOH white folks eat this crap up:
I KNOW!!! I KNOW!!!!
The black advancement movement from its inception at the turn of the 19th century has been divided into 2 camps: Radical and Conservative.
Harriet Tubman, John Brown (even tho white), Eugene Debs were examples of the Radicals thru the years. George Washington Carver is the Prime example of the Conservatives (aka: Uncle Tom).
The difference between the groups is/was profound. GWCarver got a bad rap because his natural inclination was as a scientist and he didn’t like loud people and potential violence. He also lived in a place and time when educated black men were at extreme risk. Merely being a teacher was enough to get you strung up. His personal courage is not be questioned. His adherence on not causing trouble is/was questioned quite vociferously.
He was also supremely NOT interested in making $$$. His work was oriented toward creating ways for OTHERS (mostly uneducated) to provide for themselves and their families. Further, while his work was primarily pointed at those situations common to poor, rural black populations, he was not concerned with race of those who would use the products he envisioned.
For any White male to hold up GWC as the single role model shows either a deplorable lack of knowledge about the history of black liberation thought … or a mendacious, Machiavellian (realpolitick) bent of mind.
My money is on stupidity.
What about Booker T. Washington?
My memory of that period is that George Washington Carver was mostly devoted to making peanuts a profitable agricultural crop to replace cotton–and make people like Jimmy Carter, the folks who made Tom’s crackers, the folks who made Lance crackers, and the folks who made Planter’s peanuts rich. Did I miss some of his political controversies?
Ooooh, Kirk wants STEM billionaires like George Washington Carver – low-salary mostly apolitical university professors who invent stuff that makes white people rich — those kind of STEM billionaires.
I’m surprised that Kirk didn’t roll off a list that started with Benjamin Banneker and went on to celebrate Caswell County NC’s Stephen Slade.
Ha. I must say I’m not surprised that a Republican idea to end the wealth and income disparity between African-Americans and the rest of the country is to nurture a handful of black billionaires. Nurture just enough of them and help them get rich enough to skew the mean income of the AA population and make it look to an layman like the community is becoming more prosperous, when in fact it’s just a few dozen people. I mean, that’s their model for the whole country – why not customize it to each constituent group?
Kirk has been hard to get a read on lately. He makes the occasional moderate move or noise, then says heinous-even-for-the-GOP shit like suggesting that coffins be placed outside Dem offices if anyone dies due to their Homeland Security shutdown idea. Or saying Obama is worse than Chamberlain (because yeah, obviously giving up the Sudetenland is a way better deal than forcing your adversary to dismantle 70%+ of its nuclear capacity).
Unless Duckworth really blows it, I don’t see Kirk winning another term.
Instead of creating a billionaire AA, how about creating a few million middle class AAs?
That’s where I’d start, but I’m not a money worshiper.
Cognitively he’s not all there after the stroke.
It’s meaningless, given the thin margins the NRSC is looking at for control of the Senate, and Illinois’ partisan lean, he’ll be the first pushed off the bus.
He’s all there. This is just fear of Tammy Duckworth.
I don’t think you can blame his stroke. Before that happened Kirk, then a serving member of the U.S. military reserves, went to China on a trade mission and told the Chinese that they couldn’t rely on Obama’s budget numbers.
June 2009 – Rep. Kirk: I Told Chinese Not To Trust U.S. Budget Numbers
He’s a typical GOTP idiot.
I guess he could have thrown in there that some of his best friends are black, if he really wanted to top it off.
“Would any of you kids like to raise your hands and tell the senator where he went wrong?”
I can! I can! Pick me!
My pick is trying to pitch voters from neighborhoods “that we drive faster through.”
He might as well put a sign around his neck that says: “I’m pandering to mush-headed white moderates, folks.”
Kirk was fuller of fail the longer his statement went, but his choice of “we” in the middle of this phrase is the real clincher.
OUTREACH!
telling the people you want to vote for you that you can’t fucking stand being in their neighborhood?
Thanks to all the commenters who’ve already identified and discussed several ways in which Sen. Kirk went wrong in that one paragraph.
I’ll cast a vote for using the pronoun “we” in such a way that it excludes his 1.9 million African-American constituents.
You are so right.
“…we could sponsor a whole new class of potential innovators…”
Huh? Sponsor??? WTH happened to all those bootstraps?
Good, sturdy, made in America bootstraps were outsourced to China. Now they’re flimsy, decorative embellishments that break if one were to try pulling them.