Reader Fred Ray reminds me that I missed a good one this morning.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A white Tennessee lawmaker lamenting his exclusion from the state’s Black Legislative Caucus claimed Tuesday the group was less accommodating that even the Ku Klux Klan.
“My understanding is that the KKK doesn’t even ban members by race,” said Rep. Stacey Campfield, adding that the KKK “has less racist bylaws” than the black lawmakers’ group.
….
Caucus chairman Rep. Johnny Shaw, a Democrat, dismissed Campfield’s request and called him a “strange guy” who was simply interested in stirring up trouble.
“He is using this as a joke. This is an insult coming from him,” said caucus member Rep. Larry Miller, also a Democrat. “Why he chose to focus on the Black Caucus, I have no idea other than he is crazy and a racist.”
If Campfield was trying to cause trouble, the Black Legislative Caucus’s policy of racial exclusion certainly made it easy for him to do so.
The 37-year-old Campfield defended himself Saturday in a message on his Web journal, or blog, under the heading “I too dream.”
The long excerpts from the Rev. Martin Luther King’s famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech infuriated some readers. It prompted Campfield to ban reader comments after some of the angry postings included death threats.
Wow. Quoting King can certainly be incendiary these days.
Experts on race and hate groups said Campfield hit a nerve when he used King’s words to take on a black institution. It’s the same tactic white separatists often use, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Very typically these days we see white supremacists, hate groups, trying to use the words of King and other civil rights leaders to try to advance their agendas,” Potok said.
So, all you people whose “agendas” include race-neutral colorblind non-discrimination, Beware! Quote King at your own peril.
Actually Rep. Campfield didn’t try to join the B.C. He had the audacity to ask another state representative, a member, for a copy of the bylaws of this state funded organisation- bylaws which are, by law, public record. The black representative told Campfield, whose constituents include many black people, that he could not have a copy of the bylaws because he was white.
I thought that the whole King concept was to remove “because you are (color) ” from the American lexicon.
Silly me.
The article indicated that he also asked about joining. It seems obvious he was not acting in good faith and was looking to stir up some controversy.
Making comparison’s to the KKK was disingenuaous at best. Sure, the Klan doesn’t have race specific membership rules, blacks can sign up too! And what happens at their first rally? A warm welcome at the bonfires, perhaps?
If MLK promoted a vision of civil rights that was against contemporary racial preferences, why is anybody including possible racists prohibited from espousing that same view?
On what bases are non-liberal whites prohibited from invoking the principles of black civil rights pioneers? Since we’ve honored MLK with his own day, are’t all Americans entitled to invoke his principles even if it inures to the detriment of blacks?
Obviously there needs to be a White Caucus established in the state legislature, receivingfunding on a proportionlly equal level as that received by the black caucus.
Non-white members of the legislature need to be rigorously excluded from that caucus.
And when the membrs of the clearly racist and segregationist Black Causus file suit against such a clearly racist institution, a judge can strike down the existanceof all these Jim Crow institutions, regardless of the ethnicity of the members.
Yes, it looks like he’s just trying to stir up trouble with a racist institution. Good for him.