Were these racist remarks naive, ignorant or just plain stupid?

Ignorant. A lot of people get ‘digs’ in trying to be funny, but it’s all nasty racism in disguise. This is one of the ways racists find other racists, comments like these.

Those remarks are offensive on so many levels who knows what if anything was in her head.
Mexico has surpassed the US as the most obese nation. (Put back in for JL)

Stupid most of all. It actually is statisically true black people in the US have the lowest life expectancy on average, but she tried giving reasons for it that make it sound like black people are just born bad, while probably environment has tons more to do with it. Plus, the average life expectancy does not vary that much from nonblacks, it’s less than 10 years.

Also, as @Adirondackwannabe said MX just surpassed the US for obesity, but pretty much we can partly blame US eating habits trickeling down south of the border.

No matter what, saying anything like this is stupid for a politician.

I don’t know the full context of why all this was said. Maybe the point was the senator wanted to focus on increasing the health of black people and that we should all be eating a healthier diet of vegetables. I wouldn’t assume the senator is a racist, but the remarks easily sound racist to many people.

He might have been talking about the traditional diet, of Mexico, rather than the one that people there are eating currently, but he didn’t phrase it well at all, and I agree that it smacks of racism. The statistics about diabetes and sickle cell anemia don’t lie. But although diabetes can be avoided by proper diet, I can’t see how sickle cell anemia can.

You have to admit Americans are pretty fat and unhealthy as a rule. Adopting healthy dietary habits of another culture or race can be a very good thing. My daughter who has moved to Japan would say the same. It has definitely improved her health and outlook on life.

She obviously is on the ignorant side but when I think of racism there is generally a malicious intent.

But for me, a lot would also depend upon what point she was trying to make with those comments or was she just rambling.

I have certainly heard enough medical people commenting clinically upon the poor state of health of many in the black community regarding diseases like diabetes and breast cancer in women (compared to whites in general).

However, many times it was also linked to lower socioeconomic status and the appalling lack of affordable medical care in those communities.

So, in that regard, its backed up by data and not just a stereotype.

I think the opinions about Mexicans were just pulled out of her ass since Mexico has surpassed even the US in obesity statistics so I have no idea what her point was about that.

I don’t know that I see her as maliciously racist as much as a fool who would have been better off keeping her mouth shut.

“White people have a predisposition for skin cancer due to lower melanin content but man, can they play golf!”

Seriously, what an inane string of comments.

Also, do black people only live in the South? Does she only like black people who cook good chicken? Those black people who can’t make a decent barbeque, well they deserve sickle-cell anemia and diabetes, don’t they? And why didn’t she mention watermelon and cotton picking?

Racist?

A word that has been overused as a catch all word meaning just about anything the user want it to mean.

Prejudiced? Biased?

Closer to the actual intention here.

We try way too hard to find racism in everything. She’s obviously not a doctor or nutritionist but the basic point that diet has a lot to do with longevity, heart disease, diabetes, and the like, is valid. We are deliberatly cutting off any conversation by screaming racism. Toughen up a little bit. Just because someone says the word ‘chicken’ doesn’t make them racist.

Not just a meeting… a meeting of the Economic Opportunity and Poverty Reduction Task Force.

Not only ignorant, but poorly constructed. We are looking for context because she was not clearly saying anything.

I liked the response given in the article:
“One of the things I will not tolerate is racist and incentive remarks about African Americans, the color of their skin, what you mentioned that we eat. I was highly offended by your remarks, and I will not engage in a dialogue where you are using these stereotypical references about African-Americans and chicken and food. I just will not tolerate that. This is not what this committee is all about. So I would ask that you suspend your perceptions and judgments about African-Americans about poverty. What we’re trying to do is to come up with meaningful solutions. It’s not about eating chicken.”

Some of what she says is accurate. Sickle Cell anemia is more common in Southern Africans and their descendents. But politicians are expected to be smart enough to speak without cramming their foot in their mouth, and she appears to be failing that test.

The life expectancy for Sickle Cell is in the 50s, so while it is true that African Americans are more likely to have Sickle Cell, that is hardly relevant to the Economic Opportunity and Poverty Reduction Task Force.

Humans and their petty shit. Yes it’s stupid and arrogant. When will the day come when we stop bickering and find insults regarding race or believes?

It is my belief that all too often people who want to lead others toward jumping on the band wagon with them be it racism or something else.. they ad some tidbits of truth in with the bullshit. This way two things are accomplished.
1) those who don’t know any better will just go along with whatever is being said no matter if it is completely true or on the up and up or just parts of it are &
2) so that those who see the bullshit part of it will be less likely to make a stink and say anything. If they aren’t stating how wrong your BBQ statements about the south and black people are because part of what you said is true then you will have less people against you and more on your side.

Spreading lies is best done when a bit of truth is sprinkled in with them so you can turn folks slowly in ways that they don’t notice until we all wake up to realize that some significant percentage of people (more than it once was) is now of this thinking and it all happened under our noses without notice.

Probably naive ignorance since the thrust seems health concerns and traditional eating habits among different population segments.

However choose your references more carefully. Little Black Sambo was written by a Brit and was about an Indian child who outwitted tigers getting them to chase around in circles until they melted into ghee [Indian butter[.

Ignorance is when you open your mouth and say something that shows you have no idea what you are talking about. Racism is when you open your mouth and say something generalising, stereotyping and disparaging about people, showing you have no idea what you are talking about.

@cazzie Ignorance is wonderfully demonstrated in this short video of wannabe Australian political hopeful.

@anartist does the source & subject of the racist story make a difference with regard to the imagery and how it has or hasn’t been used throughout history in American (or other) culture? If so, why?

They were intentional. i believe that she was playing to her conservative base and that this was a calculated action .i am glad that someone called her out for her racist/ignorant generalizations.

@1TubeGuru I believe you nailed that one. Great answer.

@Jenniehowell I never thought it a particularly “racist” story. It was a fun kid story about a kid who tricks the equivalent of “the big bad wolf” I read it as a kid along with Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So” stories and the “Jungle Book” as well as all sorts of magical tales like “The Phoenix and The Carpet”.or “At the Back of the North Wind”

I think we even had the Uncle Remus stories. I find nothing wrong with any of these yarns, only with the polarizing demagoguery that goes into looking at them these days.

@anartist The story itself can be magical & fun and something that sparks the imagination of the child who reads or hears or sees it. What makes a story racist is not much different than what makes one stereotype worse than another.

Those stories become racist because they perpetuate particular stereotypes &/or expectations in regard to those they are about. Those stereotypes perpetuated lead to perceptions among various people who don’t know any better either because they’re too stupid to, or because they’re too ignorant & privileged to bother doing the research to find out different. Much like the media perpetuates concepts about one group or another outside of the country which allows people to perpetuate their views and stereotypes of those cultures or nations in order to allow us to all feel good about bombing the shit out of those places in order to increase our own power over others in one way shape or form…. the stories of our childhood do much the same with groups that are already marginalized – the only difference is that they do that within our own borders as opposed to outside them.

When stories are told & stereotypes perpetuated and the full story or picture isn’t revealed or explored, it creates various biases among those who are exposed to those stories and stories like them.

If those people don’t ever receive the full information about those marginalized groups &/or cultures then they one day grow up to become senators who sit in meetings that are about poverty – when there is a discussion about poverty and how that affects access to healthy food those senators think it normal and sensible to make jokes about BBQ and how good the food that they perceive as being stereotypically black is, rather than making statements that are informed by more than their taste buds and their ignorance.

It is these ignorant people who as children hear stories that perpetuate stereotypes and never have them corrected who become our leaders and make the decisions that make or break entire cultures of people to put them in positions of having opportunities which are in fact NOT equal as our constitution guarantees. Then in turn when people complain that they aren’t on equal footing those same stereotypes which were never corrected, then perpetuate the concepts held by those in privilege, that those people are simply not working hard enough and that they are cry baby welfare moochers with nothing but complaints about how life isn’t fair & no willingness to work hard.

Stories seem simple enough…. who wouldn’t as a child wish to be able to run around a tree or a stone to trick a tiger into churning itself into some yummy butter for our toast? Who doesn’t as a child feel comforted by the slow sweet seemingly safe old man whistling about how the world is a beautiful place? It’s the further meanings of those stories & the perpetuation of those stereotypes that go along with them, which move from comforting stories of our childhoods to clear but completely false perceptions of people in our adult years who become decision makers in our society.

@Yetanotheruser I’m the naïve one. I won’t have anyone else usurping my title! It was bestowed upon me by another jelly, and confirmed by several more. I earned it, fair and square, and nobody had better try to take it away!

And no, you can’t have a sip of my Evian either! Not sharin’!