ALL IN THE FAMILY: Resignation signed by JOHN PARKER (right), Duval County member of the Democratic National Committee, who married to Duval County Chair LISA KING (left), a lobbyist, who called for his resignation two months after his remarks.
JOHN PARKER rightly after racist pro-segregation remarks. Took two months for remarks to become public. Pitiful.
Then PARKER's wife, the Duval County Chair, LISA KING, called on JOHN PARKER to resign.
She's a pro, who was present when remarks were made? Right? Took two months.
Duval County Democratic Chair LISA KING, PARKER's wife is no hausfrau, no Edith Bunker stay-at-home: she is a principal in Langton Associates, which lobbies for government grants. LISA KING's firm website biography says "has extensive contacts in state and federal government and is a registered lobbyist in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C."
Ms. King is the firm’s specialist in the fields of:
Environmental Land Acquisition Historic Preservation
Recreation
Coastal Management
Cultural Facilities Disaster Mitigation
What do you expect? Archie Bunker is alive and well and living in Jacksonville, de facto biggest city in South Georgia. Stetson Kennedy said all our local St. Johns County KKK members became Republicans. In Jacksonville, even the Democratic Party resembles a movie or television drama or comedy about wicked South-people.
By comparison, is St. Augustine becoming suave, debonair and sophisticated?
But the lede in news stories focused on his use of the term "Colored People." Why?
Yes, like the word "vagrant," the phrase "Colored People" is obsolete, antique and pretty offensive.
DNC member PARKER apparently freely used the term, showing his obsolescence. A retired union leader, PARKER's word choice shows his cabined Weltanschauung.
But what about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)?
In response to State Senator Audrey Gibson, will NAACP now change is name, its seal, and ask that all of its court victories be amended to include some less "offensive" name?
NAACP has a proud past and bright future.
I don't see NAACP changing its name to suit State Senator Audrey Gibson's whim of iron.
NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. ("Inc. Fund") are enshrined and engraved in hundreds of successful civil rights lawsuits, like those led by Thurgood Marshall, later the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. Justice Thurgood Marshall was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, who like most Americans in the 1960s, was still saying "Colored People?"
If he were alive, would Justice Thurgood Marshall be laughing at the media's "Colored People" lede and the fact that journalists buried, missed and omitted what should have been the lede -- pro-segregation nincompoopery by DNC member JOHN PARKER.
Knowing that NAACP is still the NAACP, activists and journalists failed to ask critical questions. Was this another "created crisis?"
Why two month delay in learning about what he said?
Where's the journalism? What else do we need to know about dysfunctional Florida political organizations? Where's the linguist being quoted in these stories? Where's the research.
For example, Wikipedia reports NAACP's 2008 statement that use of the term "Colored People" was inoffensive, but archaic: "It's outdated and antiquated but not offensive."
"In 1851, an article in The New York Times referred to the "colored population".[7] In 1863, the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops.
The first twelve United States Census counts enumerated '"colored" people, who totaled nine million in 1900. The census counts of 1910–1960 enumerated "negroes." NPR reported that the "use of the phrase "colored people" peaked in books published in 1970."[8] "It's no disgrace to be colored," the black entertainer Bert Williams famously observed early in the century, "but it is awfully inconvenient."[9]
"Colored people lived in three neighborhoods that were clearly demarcated, as if by ropes or turnstiles," wrote Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. about growing up in segregated West Virginia in the 1960s. "Welcome to the Colored Zone, a large stretched banner could have said.... Of course, the colored world was not so much a neighborhood as a condition of existence."[10]"For most of my childhood, we couldn't eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn't use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores," recalls Gates. His mother retaliated by not buying clothes that she was not allowed to try on. He remembered hearing a white man deliberately calling his father by the wrong name: "'He knows my name, boy,' my father said after a long pause. 'He calls all colored people George.'" When Gates's cousin became the first black cheerleader at the local high school, she was not allowed to sit with the team and drink Coke from a glass but had to stand at the counter drinking from a paper cup.[10] Professor Gates also wrote about his experiences in his 1995 book, Colored People: A Memoir.[11]
In the 21st century, "colored" is generally regarded as an offensive term.[5][12] The term lives on in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, generally called the NAACP.[5] In 2008 Carla Sims, its communications director, said "the term 'colored' is not derogatory, [the NAACP] chose the word 'colored' because it was the most positive description commonly used [in 1909, when the association was founded]. It's outdated and antiquated but not offensive."[13]
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Florida DNC official resigns after 'colored people' remark
BY MORGAN GSTALTER - 04/05/18 12:22 PM EDT 335
The Hill
A Florida Democratic National Committee (DNC) member resigned on Wednesday after other officials — including his wife — denounced his use of the term “colored people.”
In a letter obtained by Politico, John Parker offered his resignation as state committeeman of the Duval County Democratic Party and as a state DNC member after fierce pushback for his use of the term "colored people." He also reportedly praised segregation during a dinner party on Jan. 22.
“I misspoke and used language that was hurtful,” Parker wrote. “I apologized and pledged that I would learn from my mistake.”
Parker told Politico on Wednesday that he had simply misused the phrase when he intended to say “people of color.”
Diallo-Sekou Seabrooks, the head of the Black Commission in Jacksonville, told First Coast News that the remark did not appear to be an error.
“Why would you still think that 'colored' was cool? Because to me it's a Jim Crow terminology and it's unacceptable," Seabrooks said.
Seabrooks said Parker openly discussed problems created by integration of “colored people” into the city.
"I'm old enough to understand when people use context and frame that they are using it in and there was no joking in it," Seabrooks said. "Structural racism is as normal as the absence of a black agenda inside of the Democratic Party, which is 55 percent black."
Parker said that he was resigning for the good of the Democratic Party.
“I am confident that a full investigation would have shown that I erred with my mouth, not my heart,” Parker said.
Parker’s wife of 23 years, Duval County Democratic Executive Committee Chairwoman Lisa King, called on him to resign.
“Though it is painful and awkward to air this conflict publicly, I have told John from the beginning that the most appropriate course of action for him was to resign,” King told First Coast News in a written statement.
King said she had never heard him use the phrase “colored people” before and told him that his choice of words was offensive.
State Rep. Kimberly Daniels (D) told Politico that King should also resign because her silence “demonstrated her complicity.”
Daniels said this was not the first time Parker had used racially charged language.
“Preceding this instance, he allegedly referred to the Working People Caucus as the ‘Poor Black People Working Caucus' and called a constituent the 'mayor’s mammy,'" Daniels wrote in statement to Politico on Monday night.
Parker denied the allegations but still submitted his resignation after several other prominent Democrats insisted, including Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo, state Sen. Audrey Gibson and two gubernatorial candidates, Gwen Graham and Andrew Gillum.
Gillum is the mayor of Tallahassee and the only African-American running for governor.
“While I do not believe John had any intent of malice in the manner in which he spoke, it is imperative that for the good of this city and the local and statewide party that he take this action,” Gibson said in a statement Wednesday.
Lisa King... Parker's wife and Committee chair... knew about his comments on January 22 because she attended the same function and she "waited" 2 months to do something about it!
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