Another word is on the unspeakable list: Monkey.
CARPENTERSVILLE, Ill. -- An Illinois delegate for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama resigned after using the word "monkeys" to describe black children playing in a tree, the Obama campaign said Tuesday.
Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski, a trustee in the Chicago suburb of Carpentersville, was issued a $75 ticket for disorderly conduct after neighbors complained to police. She says the word wasn't meant racially and she will fight the ticket.
"Given the incident, Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski is stepping down as a delegate and will be replaced," said Obama spokeswoman Amy Brundage.
The incident occurred Saturday, when two children were playing in a tree next door to Ramirez-Sliwinski's house.
She said the parents were outside supervising the children, but she went over and told them to get out of the tree because she was concerned about the boys' safety and because the small magnolia tree was being damaged.
The father of one of the boys told her it was none of her business, she told the Chicago Tribune, and "I calmly said the tree is not there for them to be climbing in there like monkeys."
The mother of one boy called police.
Cmdr. Michael Kilbourne said Tuesday a ticket was issued because the ordinance bans conduct that disturbs or alarms people. One of the boys told police he was scared by her comment and a mother said she was disturbed, he said.
This really is lame.
I do not consider referring to kids climbing in a tree "like monkeys" to be a racial offense. Calmly intervening to prevent children from hurting themselves or damaging a small tree is not worthy of a ticket. It's commendable.
What's next? Is it racially offensive now to say "monkey bars"?
Good grief.
Ramirez-Sliwinski is stepping down as a delegate for Barack Obama over this?
Rev. Jeremiah Wright can be overtly racist and talk about the "US of KKK-A" yet Obama won't disown him.
If Ramirez-Sliwinski is ticketed for what she said, I think Wright certainly deserves a ticket too, for "conduct that disturbs or alarms people."
4 comments:
Of course, if the children had been caucasian, no one would have ever heard of this. We will someday have to carry around lists of words we cannot use while addressing or referring to people who choose to be offended. While the news media cries and moans over lost liberties in the Freedom Act, it ignores the daily grinding down of basic rights like freedom of speech. Speech then becomes free only if it says what "they" want it to say. Wake up and smell the coffee. Everytime we think we understand the new rules, the line is moved a few feet more. We will truly be the silent majority if this keeps up. There will be nothing we can say that will not offend someone. Maybe we will all get those neat little translators like Star Trek to mask out our offensive words. And hey, let's work on some kind of eye scans that can detect those offensive thoughts. Wouldn't that be swell.
I'm glad Ramirez-Sliwinski plans to fight the ticket.
An "ordinance [that] bans conduct that disturbs or alarms people" is so open-ended.
Anyone could be ticketed for almost anything.
Ramirez-Sliwinski could ask the police to ticket the parents of the boys because their conduct disturbed her.
Laurence Herman "Gus" Versluis is part African-American due to his 8th great-grandparents, William Grinstead (a Caucasian Man) and Elizabeth Key (a African and Caucasian woman). He is rolling his grave right now due to the offensive term for people of African descent.
African-American Arlene Elshinnawy is not going to like this because people calling African-Americans an offensive names to them. 12 days after this blog (April 8) Arlene Elshinnawy is no longer living.
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