Tag: racism

Amherst Racist Pig Parker: Final Version

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UPDATE: I spoke with Kyle Mast, the man shown in the video below. Without a doubt, Mr. Mast is having a bad day. To the extent people are contacting him directly to harass or threaten, you’re committing a crime and could be prosecuted. I gave Mr. Mast an opportunity to give his side of the story, and he obliged over the course of two phone calls. 

He traveled to the Dick’s on Maple to check out see if there were any good sales. He is adamant that he did not intentionally park in a handicapped spot. He sometimes has a placard to use for his own family members, and is sensitive to the need for easy access for the disabled. When he parked there, he says he saw no markings on the ground or any signs or poles marking that spot as being for the disabled. If he parked in a handicapped spot, it was accidental and not intentional. He didn’t see that it was a disabled spot, and he would typically have apologized had he realized his mistake. 

As soon as he got out of his car, Mr. Mast says Marcia Lynn began yelling at him, accusing him, “you can’t park there, you’re illegally parked” and making jokes about how his truck was overcompensating for something else; “big truck, small package” he recalls. Mr. Mast says he was “aggravated” by this taunting, but didn’t respond at all as he went into the store. 

Contrary to the Facebook post’s allegations, Mr. Mast claims only to have been inside the store for about 5 minutes, not 30. He adds that, if he had been parked illegally for 30 minutes, why didn’t the woman shooting the video complain inside to the manager. He also says that Marcia Lynn was yelling at other people about parking improperly. 

He says that, as he came back out of the store, the taunting resumed until he got into his truck. He was growing angrier because of the heckling, but also because he saw that Marcia Lynn was videotaping.  In a fit of rage – he says he was being “hotheaded” – Mr. Mast used a racial slur. He is sorry that he did that, and says, “it just came out”. He says, in retrospect, he didn’t even know or think Marcia Lynn was black, and was just trying to come up with the most hateful word he could muster. He admits that he wasn’t thinking straight, and was very upset because Marcia Lynn wouldn’t leave him alone. 

In speaking with Mr. Mast, I detected genuine remorse for what he said and what had happened. He knows what he said was wrong, and that there were many other ways he could have either defused or ignored the situation – just driving forward was one of them. Mr. Mast let his emotions get the better of him, even though he knew he was being recorded. 

Here’s a video from local Facebook user “Marcia Lynn”, capturing her encounter with the driver of a wildly conspicuous monster truck in the parking lot of a Dick’s store on Maple Road in Amherst.

Here is her story, in a nutshell:

 

Post by Marcia Lynn.

 

So, a pig parker parks his Tonka truck in a handicapped spot for about 30 minutes, and when someone confronts him about it, he tells her to, “get a life” and, just before he drives off, calls her a “nigger”.

Here’s what his real-life Hot Wheels truck looks like:

As always, you can email me at buffalopundit[at]gmail.com with any information / tips / etc .

 

Carl Paladino Threatens “Sisterhood”

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Let’s get one thing out of the way: “blurt” is not a noun.

What follows is the text of an email that Carl Paladino sent to four women of color; three of whom sit with him on the Buffalo School Board. The fourth is the board’s attorney.

To: Ms. Barbara Nevergold

Ms. Sharon Cottman

Ms. Theresa Harris-Tigg

Ms. Rashondra Martin

Cc: Everybody

From: Carl Paladino

Date: February 24, 2015

Re: Slander

Over the last few months each of you has slandered me with blurts or the use of incomprehensible illogic and accusations that I am a racist and sexist or that I have a conflict of interest.

Slander may be defined as an intentional tort which means that I can initiate a lawsuit against each of you personally and you may not have the benefit to claim defense and indemnity from the Buffalo Public Schools.

Insofar as I am a public person, in order to establish slander I must also prove malice. Under New York case law, actual malice can be shown if prior to the slander you were put on notice that the slanderous statement is false and is not supported by fact.

This letter shall serve as notice to you that there is absolutely no discernible basis for your accusation that I am a racist or sexist. Further, there are two legal opinions from two different competent, qualified and objective attorneys that show that I, as a member of the Board of Education, have no conflict in dealing with issues involving charter schools.

This letter shall serve as further notice that in the event that you continue to offer false and defamatory statements, I intend to protect my reputation and will take all appropriate legal or other action at my disposal to do so.

Anyone with a checkbook can bring a lawsuit. It doesn’t mean anything. Anyone with a mouth or a pen or a computer can threaten a lawsuit. That, too, is meaningless.  The underlying question is whether the lawsuit has any merit.

Cutting again to the chase, were Carl Paladino to bring this threatened defamation lawsuit against the four women of color who serve with him on the board of education, his lawsuit would not likely withstand a motion to dismiss, because it would be completely without merit. In fact, anyone bringing it should be sanctioned for wasting the court’s time with utter frivolity.

Why? Because the underlying rationale behind defamation jurisprudence is that the plaintiff is protecting his reputation: his standing in the community, his good name. Alas, Carl Paladino’s reputation is not all that good. Sure, some people like him, and the Buffalo News has been his apologist-in-chief for decades, but Paladino is as reviled as he is beloved. Were Paladino to actually bring a slander lawsuit, and it made it past a motion to dismiss, he would by definition open his character and reputation up for scrutiny. The discovery process—the exchange of documents and things, and depositions under oath—would be compelling indeed.

Mr. Paladino accuses Ms. Nevergold, Ms. Cottman, Ms. Harris-Tigg, and Ms. Martin of slander because they have accused him of being racist, sexist, and of having conflicts of interest with respect to board action on charter schools. He threatens to sue them for slander. Mr. Paladino is not, however, a victim of actionable defamation. 

Firstly, the alleged defamation must be a false statement of fact. “Pastor Jones beats his wife,” if untrue, would be slander. On the other hand, “I think Pastor Jones is a violent jerk” is opinion, and not actionable defamation.  

Secondly, insofar as these women of color have made these allegations against Mr. Paladino within the context of their shared service to a school board, their statements are likely immune from any action for libel or slander. 

Mr. Paladino notes that he is a public figure. In the US, it is more difficult for public figures to bring successful defamation suits. They must prove that the false and defamatory statement of fact was made with “actual malice,” which the law defines as “knowing or reckless disregard for its truth or falsity.” But here, is it a statement of fact or a statement of opinion to say that Carl Paladino is racist or sexist? If a statement of fact, is it “false and…not supported by fact,” as Mr. Paladino alleges? 

One need only go back five short years to find ample evidence of Mr. Paladino’s purported sexism or racism. In email caches WNYMedia.net published on two occasions in 2010, there exist myriad supporting examples. 

Racism? Here’s the first batch of emails. Public official and Buffalo School Board member Carl Paladino sent an email in 2008 featuring a video of African tribal dancers and it was captioned, “Obama Inaugural Rehearsal.” An email dated October 2009 shows President and Mrs. Obama photoshopped into 1970s-style “pimp and ‘ho” outfits. It’s captioned, “White House Ball.” Another email showed an image of black males running from what appears to be an airplane bearing down on them. It’s captioned, “Holy Shit! Run, Niggers, Run!” In April 2008, Mr. Paladino, “told an educational gathering that School Superintendent James A. Williams was hired ‘because he was black.'” The Common Council condemned Mr. Paladino’s remarks as “racially divisive.”

Based on these materials alone—which Carl Paladino approvingly forwarded to a wide array of local bigshots, politicians, bureaucrats, and developers—certainly the women of color who serve the Buffalo Board of Education can easily establish that their charges of racism against Mr. Paladino are “supported by fact.”

Sexism? That first email blast contained a handful of hardcore pornography, including a video of a horse having anal sex with a human female. A second batch of emails, published later in 2010, shows more hardcore pornography and degradation of women. One email shows video of a woman expressing breast milk onto a pane of glass, and there’s a lesbian scene that a vocal anti-gay Paladino labeled “awesome.” This current school board trustee sent around a video of a woman getting a Brazilian wax, and another video—from “fistflush.com”—of a woman shoving a bunch of bananas into her vagina.

Based on these two sets of released emails (more exist that have not yet been publicly released), the women of color against whom Mr. Paladino is waging war can easily establish that their charges of sexism against Mr. Paladino are “supported by fact.”

These women of color are, after all, referred to as the “Black Sisterhood“—sometimes by themselves, and sometimes by Mr. Paladino. There’s a significant difference, however. When they use that term to refer to themselves, they do so out of mutual respect, pride, admiration, and teamwork. When Mr. Paladino spits it at them with his characteristic vitriol, it drips with racial animus and misogyny, and it’s not accidental.

All of this comes just two weeks after Paladino publicly tore into Martin, calling her “ignorant” and threatening her license to practice law. This led Martin to make a formal complaint about sexism and racism by the Board of Education to the New York State Division of Human Rights. This is no way, incidentally, to “run a business.” It’s a waste of time, money, and resources to expose yourself and the school board to a civil rights complaint because you can’t keep your own “blurts” to yourself. Uncontrolled, hateful lurching from tantrum to tantrum is not how responsible adults behave in a professional environment. Even if you disagree strongly with someone, you don’t provoke them by calling them “ignorant” or otherwise trolling them.

“He’s gone after every female, African American female who’s an authority,” she said. “He’s done a lot of bullying. It’s typical of what he does. You can’t sit in an administrative position and do whatever you want to do.”

In her complaint, Martin alleges Paladino subjects African American female employees to a “racially and sexually hostile work environment.”

She also named the school board claiming it has taken no action to “admonish or address Mr. Paladino for his comments.”

Paladino maintains that Rashondra Martin has aligned herself with the four African American women on the board against the five-person majority, which is mostly white males.

“These people, devoid of any other plausible or reasonable argument to defend their positions on things, play the race card and that’s just what she’s doing,” Paladino said. “And that’s getting to be a burden.”

Finally, we turn to the allegation that Mr. Paladino has a conflict of interest as it relates to his advocacy in favor of charter schools. Companies associated with his Ellicott Development lease space to charters in Buffalo. Mr. Paladino rightly notes that a few lawyers have examined these dealings and concluded that there is no conflict of interest. That’s because Paladino quickly divested himself of any interest he personally had in these properties and transferred them to his children. Convenient. If his decisions on the board have a direct pecuniary benefit to Paladino’s children, that’s not legally a conflict of interest, but as a practical matter? None of this has been adjudicated or challenged in any adversarial way. The women of color on the Buffalo school board are well within their rights to continue to voice their opinion that Mr. Paladino is conflicted. They are well within their rights to accuse him of such conflict, and to do so in the press.

It’s not the first time Mr. Paladino has been accused of such conflicts. In 1993, then-Common Council President James Pitts told Paladino that he sits “on the top of the City of Buffalo like a vulture on dry bones,”; adding, “Mr. Paladino has mined the political fields very, very lucratively…If you begin to look at his involvement on all of these boards, his involvement is not based on public service but on private gain. Clearly there needs to be a separation of interests.” Pitts said Paladino’s conflicts of interest were “as blatant as Danny Thomas’ nose.” Indeed, in the 1990s, Paladino targeted his ire at African-American council members James Pitts and George Arthur.

If Mr. Paladino chooses further to escalate this fight that he picked by suing these women of color for defamation, it will make for entertaining copy. It will not, however, further any of the interests he purports to be promoting or defending. A defamation suit isn’t going to fix any failing schools, it won’t raise attendance or graduation rates, and it won’t do anything positive for the district’s overall reputation.

Go Racist Team Name!

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redskin2

No, really. Go.

Although “political correctness” and “PC” is now hurled as an epithet, within its definition is the radical notion that people should not deliberately be horrible to one another. Sure, Dinesh D’Souza has a right to call the African-American President of the United States a “boy” from the “ghetto“, but you don’t need a sociology degree to realize how that’s offensive on two levels. The President is a “man”, not a “boy”, and “boy” has historically been used to pejoratively refer to African-American adult males. President Obama also isn’t from the ghetto. Not all black people come from the ghetto. Not all behavior you deem beneath you is “ghetto”. People like Dinesh D’Souza make a good living by being horrible to others. He is not politically correct, and that’s a shame because civil society should live up to that adjective.

The Lancaster High School sports program calls itself the “Redskins”. There is a push on now to have the district re-name the team because some American Indians are offended by it. More to the point, however, the team name is objectively racist. After all, we don’t call teams “Whiteskins” or “Blackskins” or “Yellowskins”. The reason why has to do with the blatant and palpable racial overtones. Redskins is no different, no matter what the tradition or intent. Identifying an ethnic group or race based on their physical characteristics – here, a pejorative term for their skin color – is a slur. You’re highlighting how they’re different from you.

Search any dictionary – Merriam Webster, American Heritage, Dictionary.com, Kernerman Webster’s, Collins – they all define “redskin” as offensive, racist, anachronistic slang.

Some Lancaster residents inexplicably reject that.

“It’s a word. It’s a matter of context,” said Everett, president of Performance Advantage. “No one in this community would support the negative element associated with that name. We don’t subscribe to this negative connotation. It means a lot to people – dedication, achievement, commitment to excellence.”

The Lancaster School District has a choice to make here. Unlike the Washington Redskins, an NFL franchise, we’re talking about a school. If you were to go around spewing racial epithets at kids in the hall, you’d be subject to discipline. So, how does that jibe with having a racist team name? If a student referred to an American Indian kid as a “Redskin” or similar, he’d be punished, but we’re meant to believe that it’s ok to use that term if people are doing the important work of throwing balls hither and thither?

I’m not personally offended by the team name “Redskins”, but I see that many American Indians are. That’s enough to me to – again, reverting back to the core definition of “politically correct” – support changing the name so as to not offend our indigenous Americans with a racial epithet.

Proponents of the “Redskins” name say it evokes pride, bravery, tradition, and all of the good stuff with which we associate indigenous Americans. Here’s the logo:

The Lancaster School District’s mission is:

…to provide our students with a comprehensive educational program that will allow them to develop fully the necessary academic and social skills to become responsible and productive members of a democratic society.

Responsible and productive members of a democratic society. Part of being responsible within a democratic society is changing a team name that has a mere 67 year history, and is blatatly racist by every dictionary definition.

It’s so simple for the district’s school board to simply vote away a racist team name. There are literally thousands of alternative team names available to use, none of which are by definition disparaging to any historically oppressed ethnic or racial minority. What’s so hard to comprehend here? By the Lancaster School District’s own code of conduct (doc, emphases added),

Students are expected to behave, and to treat all students, teachers, school staff and others, with honesty, tolerance, respect, courtesy and dignity as per the LCSD Policy #7552 — Bullying in the Schools. Students should respect their peers, teachers, and school staff. Individual behavior should not interfere with the rights of others. Students are expected to use language that is appropriate in demonstrating respect for self and others. Profanity, vulgar language including, but not limited to, racial comments, and/or obscene gestures toward others will not be tolerated. Appropriate disciplinary action will be taken.

How are students expected to abide these basic disciplinary expectations if the district itself failes to do so? The example the district is setting is a poor one. Racist comments are not tolerated between students, but it’s ok for the school’s team and mascot to be a “redskin” American Indian?

The upshot of all of this is, in the big picture, how inconsequential a name change would be. Would Lancaster students, teams, and alumni have less pride in their school or alma mater if the team’s name was changed? Does changing the name of the team and school mascot lessen past glory or affect one’s affinity for the school? Of course not. A racist name chosen almost 70 years ago, before the Civil Rights Act and before Congress and the Courts came around to agreeing that our contemporary American society guaranteed to all citizens, regardless of race or color, the same basic civil rights, is due for a change. Especially when you’re talking about an oppressed people expelled from their homes by colonial invaders.

This isn’t the kind of thing you poll for; you don’t leave it up to majority vote. Just because the name is popular doesn’t make it less racial. Just because 50%-plus-one residents might support it doesn’t make it less violative of the district’s own code of conduct. Just because you’re purporting to use a racist term to highlight what you say are that group’s positive traits doesn’t make it less racist. We would never dream of using “Yellowskins” or some other racist term for a team to describe positive Asian attributes, nor would it be appropriate to use Nazi-era caricatures  to establish that Jewish people are good with money. These are examples of “political correctness”, too.

Appropriately enough for a school district, this is a teaching moment. Will Lancaster show its student body that it’s willing to follow the same code of conduct it expects kids to follow? Will Lancaster’s school district opt to be respectful of all races and ethnicities by changing the school’s mascot and team name to any one of a thousand inoffensive alternatives?

It seems to me that this hardly merits a controversy. High Schools should lead by example and name their teams using terms that aren’t overtly racist.

Dog Whistles of 2015

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The incoming Republican majority whip in the House spoke to a white supremacist group in 2002. He claims now that he had no idea who David Duke was at the time, but really dug his “conservative” views.

“I literally defeated the Republican sitting governor of that state,” said Duke, referring to the 1991 race in which he forced a runoff against Democratic candidate Edwin Edwards. “I had a huge amount of Republican support.”

Duke’s 1991 campaign had already made the former Ku Klux Klan leader a pariah in the rest of the country. He ultimately lost the gubernatorial race to Edwards, but many observers noted that he won a majority of the state’s white voters. Duke claimed Monday that within Louisiana, he was still well respected. As late as 2000, he pointed out, he sat on his local district’s Republican Party executive committee.

At the time, Duke had spent two years abroad after federal agents raided his home as part of an investigation into mail fraud and tax charges. He spoke to the 2002 conference via a teleconference link from Russia, so he is not sure whether Scalise would have heard his speech, which referenced his conspiracy theory about how “Israeli treachery” was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

That sounds reasonable. Why, just the other day – on Christmas Eve – one of the guys who claimed to have been instrumental in inviting the “Tea Party Express” PAC party bus to Buffalo sent this:

Anyhow, if you’re a Republican in Louisiana and you want to pretend you don’t know that David Duke is a racist, hatemongering, neo-Confederate, then you’re being willfully ignorant. But Mr. Scalise isn’t like that, right? He’s a pretty reasonable guy, right?

Scalise’s own message has not always been one of inclusion. Months after criticizing Duke, he was one of six state representatives who voted against making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a state holiday. He had also voted against a similar bill in 1999.

Also in 1999, Scalise told Roll Call that he was more electable than David Duke. What made Duke so unelectable?

Twelve years ago, Scalise spoke at a two-day conference hosted by the Duke-founded European-American Unity and Rights Organization, which is recognized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On Monday, he told NOLA.com, “I didn’t know who all of these groups were and I detest any kind of hate group. For anyone to suggest that I was involved with a group like that is insulting and ludicrous.”

So many dog-whistles, so little self-awareness.

Area Cretin Laments Death of America

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When It was OK to be anti-German

Robert Knapp of Lewiston, NY has some very important thoughts about America and how far its fallen. Perk up your listening ears, and make sure you pay close attention to any dog whistles you might hear.

What happened to my America? When you could walk down any street at any time and feel safe – not be shot at or mugged.

The premise here is that America was once a country without any crime, petty or grand. There was never an America where it was safe always to walk down a street without fear of being victimized by some crime or another. Ever. Crime has existed since the dawn of time, and violence is, for better or worse, what made our country what it is.

When you could say “Merry Christmas” and nobody would be offended.

No one is “offended” when someone says “Merry Christmas”. But it is a fact that there are several holidays in December, not all of which are celebrated by everyone. Some people find it just as kind and polite – if not more so – to simply say, “Happy Holidays”.

I remember an America when you could say, “Happy Holidays” and nobody would be offended.

When regardless of the language you spoke at home, in public you spoke English, and did not have Spanish as a second language.

That passage right there is just the author’s more politically correct way of using an anti-Latino epithet. Seriously, why not just say, “fucking spics” while you’re at it? Notice how the first part of the sentence is open to myriad native languages, but the only tongue the author singles out for his offense and ire is Spanish. Here’s a thought – just ignore the Spanish text on whatever sign is so offensive to you.

When people were innocent until proven guilty.

 

Based on the general tenor of this screed, I’m going to guess that this author is referring to the cops whom grand juries cleared of wrongdoing in the homicides of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Well, people are innocent until proven guilty.  By juries. At trial. That doesn’t mean the general public, prosecutors, or police can’t suspect that these people are guilty – it just means that a jury and judge must be impartial.

When we were all Americans, without a race before it.

America is a made-up country that was never homogeneous and was created by and for immigrants and refugees. Some of us were 3/5th Americans. Some of us had no rights at all. Until the 20th Century, women couldn’t even vote. And this isn’t a new complaint  – it goes back at least over a century. I’m not sure what panacea this gentleman has concocted for himself, but it’s ok for Americans to call themselves whatever they want. It is, after all, a free country.

When a human life meant something, and a person who took an oath to save people did not leave a young girl dying on the roadside.

What?

When our motto was to “speak softly and carry a big stick,” not to wimp out and carry a feather.

Teddy Roosevelt coined that phrase around 1901 to characterize his foreign policy ideology, which at the time was focused, somewhat ironically, on the subjugation and colonization of Latin American countries. As for “wimping out”, the US has been involved in nation-building Asian land wars almost continually since 2001. So, who knows what this guy’s talking about?

When a red light and a stop sign meant stop, not ignore it.

Traffic scofflaws are on a recent uptick? People never ran red lights and stop signs before n0bummer?

We were known as a “melting pot.” Now we are a dumping ground.

The racism and xenophobia really aren’t veiled at all – thinly or otherwise, is it?

We are well on our way to becoming a Third World country, with people living in cardboard homes and sewage running down our streets.

Well, no we’re not and I’ll repeat: who even knows what this guy’s talking about? Is this some call for making housing more affordable, or for a massive public works project to fix our crumbling infrastructure?

No. Paraphrasing – he’s just saying these garbage (“dumping ground”) brown people are shitting and pissing in the street like they do in Wetbackistan where they came from.

What happened to my America?

It never existed. You made it up. It’s a figment of your imagination.

Incidentally, “Knapp” is a German surname. Here’s what they said about German immigrants way back when. What happened to Mr. Knapp’s America? You know, the good old days when you could own a black and hate the Hun?

Sheesh, that’s compelling. Who let you in?

Join the Conservative Fusion Party’s “Police Brutality PAC”

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Carl Paladino is shilling for the NYS Conservative Party, forwarding the email shown below (SFW): 

That’s pretty cool! Register with the Conservative Party, because the cops put a black man in an illegal-since-1993 chokehold and committed homicide! I mean, the NYPD is going to re-train officers as a result of this tragedy, but w/e! I mean, they killed this man and waited a full 7 minutes before trying CPR! He’s black, so he doesn’t count, right, Carl? Right, Conservative Party?  As Paladino so aptly put it in an earlier email, 

 

DEMOCRATS: STOP ASKING FOR THIS PARTY’S ENDORSEMENT.

IF YOU SEEK THE ENDORSEMENT OF THE CONSERVATIVE FUSION PARTY, YOU ARE EXPLICITLY ENDORSING SHIT LIKE THIS.

Scenes from America

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In Ferguson, Missouri, a police officer shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager. The shots were not at close range, indicating no immediate struggle, and there were at least six shots fired. Setting aside the subsequent character assassination of the victim, the police response to popular outrage and demonstrations has been militaristic in nature, and overflowing with issues of race and class in contemporary America. 

No one condones looting or violence, but the ridiculously overwrought police response has quashed the people’s right to demonstrate. 

Hysterical right wing commentators have overwhelmingly sided with the police officer who shot Michael Brown, labeling the dead kid a “thug” who clearly deserved to die. Of course, we still don’t have a copy of the police report surrounding the shooting incident. The people in Ferguson are outraged by the latest homicide of an unarmed Black teenager under questionable circumstances, and their demonstrations have been met with this: 

Some months back, there was a standoff in Nevada over Cliven Bundy and his cows. Back in 1993, Bundy didn’t like a change in policy at the Bureau of Land Management, so he refused to renew his license to permit his cattle to graze on public land. In 1998, a federal court barred Bundy from letting his cattle graze on the “Bunkerville Allotment”. In July 2013, a federal judge further ordered Bundy off of additional lands. 

It should be noted that, in both court cases, Bundy had an opportunity to be heard, and exercised it.

In 2014, the Bureau of Land Management undertook action to forcibly remove Bundy’s cattle from federal lands pursuant to the court orders. Hundreds of armed, right-wing, so-called “militia” came to Bundy’s aid in the Nevada brush, and the rancher became a right-wing, anti-Obama cause celebre. 

American fascists justify the homicide of Michael Brown, whom they dismiss as nothing more than a thug who got what was coming to him. They deride the outpouring of grief and anger in Ferguson as being nothing more than a subhuman gallery of violent looters. They have nothing whatsoever to say about a military show of force against lawful protests in Ferguson, and ignore the obvious provocation of police snipers and tanks aiming at civilians in middle America. 

But when Cliven Bundy disregarded a lawful order of the court, and declared some sort of idiotic war against a federal government he claims has no legitimacy, hundreds of American fascists came to his aid. The bloodlust against federal agents was shocking, and we had images that contrast with those out of Ferguson in one very salient way: 

In Ferguson, protesters are mostly African-American, and the government’s guns are pointed at them. 

In Nevada, protesters were mostly white, and they pointed their guns at government agents. 

It’s like the anti-Burning Man

 

Cliven Bundy had people aiming guns at federal agents, but we’re supposed to get all upset because some angry demonstrators in Ferguson broke a McDonald’s store windows or stole some TVs? 

The people who support Cliven Bundy’s defiance of legitimate government authority think that the demonstrators in Ferguson have no business protesting questionable government actions. 

Go home, America. You’re drunk. 

Racist Assault at a Cheektowaga Dollar General (Update)

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Do you know this woman? 

She’s got some interesting views on race. Put another way, this is on the front page of Reddit as of Wednesday morning. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqdCWpUmP-Y]

My favorite part is when she’s on the phone (depicted above) with, ostensibly, her husband and rhetorically asks, (around 2:30) “oh, he knows the cops? How many cops have I stripped for? “

This woman is not only allowed to walk the streets of Cheektowaga, she’s got two kids in front of whom she’s yelling “ni**er” at a Black man whose only offense was to start his car when her boy was nearby, apparently startling him. 

Maybe we can set aside the facile Buffalo exceptionalism for a moment and revisit the idea that our people are no better or worse, necessarily, than those anywhere else in the United States. Perhaps instead of “everything is awesome”, we can use incidents such as these to identify and treat a racist cancer plaguing a place that has acute resentments borne out of ignorance and economic hardship. 

This woman is a symptom of a much larger problem that our #Buffalove tends too often to brush aside. 

UPDATE: She called in to WBLK to defend herself. We learn: 

1. Her name is “Janelle Ambrosia”; 

2. She’s having a very bad day; 

3. The man who took the video “almost hit” her kid with his car, but did not hit anyone with anything; 

4. The man who took the video allegedly called her a “crackhead cracker”; 

5. She thinks that someone shouldn’t be able to post videos – “ex-specially” of her kids – on YouTube; and

6. She is unapologetic – “what am I supposed to do? Apologize?” 

 

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