Ouch. As Allah points out, her party is identified in the second sentence – a practice usually reserved for Republican politicians. But the political ramifications could be severe here.
Rep. Carla Blanchard Dartez, a Democrat, acknowledged that she ended a Thursday night conversation with Hazel Boykin by saying, “Talk to you later, Buckwheat.” Dartez had been thanking Boykin for driving voters to the polls…
Boykin, 75, helped desegregate restaurants and the parish school system in the 1960s. Her son, Jerome, is president of the Terrebonne Parish chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“I’ve never had no one talk to me that way and I considered it a racial slur,” Hazel Boykin said. “I know the meaning of it, it’s just like the N-word.”
Jerome Boykin said Monday he planned to ask voters to cast ballots against Dartez, who faces Republican Joe Harrison in Saturday’s runoff.
“At this point, the NAACP is not concerned about the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. If a Republican is elected because of her racist remarks, that’s her responsibility,” he said of Dartez.
Allah writes:
The question left unanswered by the AP article: Was “Buckwheat” some sort of Freudian slip as Dartez was trying to say “Boykin”? Or was it intentionally uttered in some bizarre half-assed attempt at camaraderie?
Dartez claims she bought an Eddie Murphy video at Wal-Mart the other day, and that’s what they said on it. What, is she a second-grader who utters something in a classroom inappropriately, because he/she heard it somewhere? I’d recommend Dartez actually check what a phrase means before uttering it at a crucial time.
by Stephan Tawney on Mon, Nov 12, 2007 at 8:31 pm