Palin's record on race a blank sheet

[kskiska]

Source: SF Chronicle

There's no record that Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin uttered anything more than the obligatory complimentary congratulations to the woman that beat her out for the Miss Alaska title in 1984. The winner was Maryline Blackburn, an African American. A ritual congratulatory wish from Palin would have been about the only public acknowledgement to date from her in an instance, in this case a beauty contest, where Palin was confronted with the issue of diversity in the person of a competitor.

Since then, Palin's record on race and diversity has been the blankest of blank sheets. The probes into Palin's record on diversity and civil rights have almost exclusively focused on her views on gay rights, same-sex marriage and equal pay. These are crucial civil rights issues. But so are racial diversity and civil rights.

The Web site OntheIssues.org gives a comprehensive look at the positions of elected officials on the major issues based on their statements, speeches, campaign materials and policy-position papers. Palin has taken no position on immigration, affirmative action, job and housing discrimination, school re-segregation, police-minority community relations and racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

The site did list two terse positions Palin took on hate crimes legislation and cultural diversity. Both give a tiny window into the would-be vice president's thinking on diversity and civil rights. During the 2006 gubernatorial campaign, she told the Eagle Forum that she opposed expanded hate crime legislation. She branded all heinous crimes as hate crimes. This view of what constitutes a hate crime goes squarely against the wide body of law and public policy that defines a hate crime as a willful act or threat based solely on racial, gender or religious animus. By lumping common crimes, no matter how repulsive, into the hate crime category, Palin would effectively gut enforcement of federal hate crime laws.

(snip)

Knowing Palin's views on race and civil rights, whatever they are, is more than just a matter political one-upmanship. If elected, her views will carry much weight when it comes to making and enforcing legal and public policies that affect minorities and women.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/05/EDFG12NLTV.DTL

[firedupdem]

1. I really hope the media gets some balls...........

and exposes her for what she is. I hope the American public realizes that McCain and the rest thinks we are all stupid.

[kestrel91316]

2. IMHO she is a closet white supremacist who has only let her guard

down once in public that we know of, in a restaurant in AK.

"Sambo"
"Community organizers"
"Pitbull"
Joel's Army
Dominionism

She has left enough of a trail of clues for people to get an inkling of her true nature.

[harpboy_ak]

14. Take a look at this!

http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/09/05/alaskans-speak-in-a-frightened-whisper-palin-is-%E2%80%9Cracist-sexist-vindictive-and-mean%E2%80%9D/#more-954

Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean”

September 5, 2008

by Charley James –

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

[crossroads]

19. Put Lipstick On This Pig...

and call her a Pitbull!

[wanpete]

3. Her heart speaks through her words. I was very offended by the tone she used

to go after Obama. It's one thing to throw political jabs. Her words were disrespectful, hateful, and condescending. She is not going over well at all in the African-American community. That is a fact!

[Posteritatis]

4. Blank or blanc? (nt)

[Karenina]

5. The latter...

A WHITE SHEET!

[Liberal Dose]

6. Off to the Greatest Page with you. Everyone needs to see this. Palin is Dubya in a skirt, only worse

:crazy:

[YDogg]

7. except for the whole "sambo" thing

[Solly Mack]

8. the media is just now getting around to her OntheIssues.org page?

[Ian David]

9. ...

[BumRushDaShow]

10. As an interesting observation -take note of the goings-on of 1983-1984 in the Miss America pagent...

In the fall of 1983, Vanessa Williams who was Miss New York, was crowned Miss America 1984, and was the first AA in the history of the pageant to win the title of Miss America. However after an early modeling career photo-shoot surfaced and caused an uproar, she stepped down, and 1st runner up, Miss New Jersey - Suzette Charles, another AA, took over the title. So when Palin competed the following year (in 1984 for Miss America 1985), she was competing for a spot when the reigning Miss America WAS an AA. And she then faces the irony of subsequently losing out to an AA for the Miss Alaska title... This in a state with an AA population of ~4% (which actually is pretty significant given the number of states with far fewer AAs).

There is a website here: http://www.geocities.com/missusamagicf/MA1985Delegates.html with photos of some of the contestants and includes a photo of Miss Alaska winner Maryline Blackburn (who went on to compete for Miss America 1985).

As a side note, this year is the 20th anniversary of the Bakke ruling (from 1978) that essentially began a major effort to turn back the clock on the remedies put into place (collectively lumped into the term "affirmative action") to level a playing field in which race was used against non-majority groups for hundreds of years. Wading into that discussion is somewhat outside the scope here, but one can see that there is a very very strong undercurrent that has built up since the late '70s leading to the rise of another generation of bigots, albeit a greatly reduced number of them... but the concern is to ensure that they don't rise to high office to impose backwards-thinking policies into the legislative process - a la, a backlash in a form not unlike the rise of Jim Crow after the liberating period of Reconstruction.

The good news is that during a period of increased integration despite housing self-separation, exposed people of different races, ethnicities, religions (or non-religion), and gender-identification, to each other, and HAS slowly but surely, allowed for a more tolerant society in subsequent generations. The fact that a biracial product born and raised during a time of demand for racial equality is here today on the threshold, without "cheating" or "pro-weighting" in the political process (in fact, the process has actually been weighted against him, with the continual massive negative media bias), is testament to how far we have come.

[kwolf68]

11. Of course it's a blank sheet

She didn't even know African-Americans existed until last week.

[Mesteryo]

12. Are you sure?

I bet her stance on race has some white sheets in it.

[AndyTiedye]

13. What Kind of Blank Sheet?

[conspirator]

20. LOL nt

[MadHound]

15. So I suppose that her agreement with, and endorsement of the AIP is not worth mentioning

C'mon, this group is a political front for white supremacists, and though she wasn't a card carrying member of the group, she allied hard with them for a long time, and her husband actually was a member. Not to mention that most A/G folks, at least where I lived, were hard core racists.

Once again the media is soft selling Palin, painting her as an everyday person when in reality she is an authoritarian, extreme right wing freak.

[Regret My New Name]

17. AIP??? American Institute of Physics?

:P What is AIP?


*edit* never mind, I found it.

[slackmaster]

16. Too late for an R, so I'm giving this excellent topic a K

:kick:

[noel711]

18. The media is deaf, dumb and blinded...

Not a word..
either about her lack of depth on the issues
of diversty,
nor about her bizarre religious affiliations.
Both of these topics brought Obama to the public podium,
to address, in depth, his views on them.

But what is she?
Blank?
But she's hot.. so we should stop picking on her.
The shallow acceptance of her- as she is-
as a public figure, and possibility, is appalling.

[bdamomma]

21. we don't know her stance on race?

didn't she refer to Obama as Sambo.