From yesterday's NY Daily News...
The City Council, led by Speaker Christine Quinn, did the right thing yesterday in stripping Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron of the chairmanship of the Higher Education Committee.
Barron is a one-time Black Panther who is given to extreme racial views and to a nonsensically divisive confrontational style. He proved himself the wrong person to have authority over the City University of New York and its 480,000 students.
The Council dumped him by a tally of 47 to 1 (the 1 being Barron) as the body approved all its committee memberships in a block vote. The overwhelming tally and the absence of expressions of support for Barron among the multi-ethnic, multi-racial membership nicely put the matter to rest without racial controversy...
His inflammatory rhetoric has become part of the City Hall fabric. In 2002, he said, for example: "I want to go up to the closest white person and say, 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing,' and then slap him, just for my mental health."
Last month, Barron provoked an unseemly confrontation with with a CUNY trustee at a ground-breaking at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
It also came to light that, addressing the Medgar Evers College commencement in June, Barron gave the graduates advice that is far out of step in a country struggling to get past race as a defining characteristic in the age of President Obama.
"I don't want you to be a lawyer who happens to be black. Be a black lawyer," Barron said. "I don't want you to be an elected official who happens to be black. Be a black elected official. We got a black President. We got a black governor. Say black, black, black, black, black. They don't even want us to say we're black anymore."
Before the vote, Quinn declined to discuss Barron, saying only that a committee chair should be a "unifying force." The gavel passed to freshman Manhattan Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, a former teacher.
Good luck to him.
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written by GOPNYC , January 23, 2010
I'll bravely state (from behind my cloak of -- sort of -- anonymity) what you didn't, Jay: Charlile Barron is a vitriolic RACIST of the first order who should have been censured and removed from the City Council AGES ago.
It speaks VOLUMES about the quality of leadership in our City Council that not ONE SINGE MEMBER has ever stepped up to the plate and called him that in public.
Since "racism" is usually determined in the eye of the beholder , I use these operating rules for the term.
1. A "racist" is one who makes decisions based on race.
2. A statement by an individual is "racist" if it is extermally inconsistent; that is, if the same comment were spoken by a member of another race, would most people view it as "racist"?
Barron consistently fails both tests; he is, therefore, a racist.
Keep in mind, though, that this is another case of "your tax dollars at work": YOU'RE paying Barron's salary; YOU'RE payiing for the platform he uses to launch his vitriol. YOU pay for his staff, his offices (yes; he has TWO -- one in his district; the other near City Hall).
Now, imagine this: apply the external consistecy rule: imagine if a WHITE RACIST were in the City Council spreading HIS/HER vitriol....would the Council stand for it? Do they give Barron a pass because he's Black?
If the answer to that is "yes", then the ENTIRE CITY COUNCIL is "racist" (at least in my humble means of testing.)
written by Daniel Peterson , January 24, 2010
I've heard Barron use the word, "Whitey."
Can anyone imagine what his reaction would be if someone countered with "Blacky?"
I'm curious, b/c it's not a term used, really.
written by evannyny , January 25, 2010
When Barron in 2005, I think, contemplated a run for Mayor, he said, WRONGLY he could also run for re-election to the council. You've heard of one man one vote? I called THIS, one racist, two offices
Barron was asked by WABC's Steve Malzberg about his "slapping a white person" remark. Malzberg asked Barron the obvious,
"What if a white person said, 'sometimes I feel like slapping a black person.'
But Barron is smart. He said, 'a white person would never say that; it is black jargon, black vernacular, not something you'd ever hear a white say.
Even if that is true, BARRON does NOT understand the vileness of his remark.
Charles Barron is NOT
Chris Rock or Richard Pryor or Flip Wilson. Or a Rapper!
They can and do, if they want, say anti-white remarks.
Charles Barron is a public official, elected by white people and representing them in the Council.
And now his wife is in the State Assembly, I believe. Not bad for a racist country like America! He is truly a joke, but the GOP members of the Council, should monitor him. He is unstable and could at some point do something violent.
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