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[Editor's note: With the 50th anniversary of the MLK, Jr. Speech in Washington this seems particularly appropriate.]
Louisiana Gov. Bobby
Jindal, who is both a rising and falling star in Republican circles warned
against the party becoming the “Party of the Stupid”. He
must have had Colorado State Senator Vicki Marble in mind.
The
comments came during a meeting of the Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction
Task Force Wednesday at the Capitol as lawmakers on the committee were
presented with a number of statistics highlighting racial disparities in the
poverty rate.
“When you look at life expectancy, there
are problems in the black race: sickle-cell anemia is something that comes up,
diabetes is something that’s prevalent in the genetic makeup and you just can’t
help it,” Marble said. “Although I’ve got to say, I’ve never had better BBQ and
better chicken and ate better in my life than when you go down south and you —
I love it.”
Marble
went on to mention how Mexicans eat vegetables in Mexico
but stop eating healthily when they immigrate to the United States
“These things aren’t good for you,” she
continued. “There’s so many attributing factors as to why these graphs look the
way they do.”
Fortunately in this
instance there was an intelligent and articulate person ready to respond.
Moments later, Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, responded to Marble
on the record — and she didn’t pull any punches.
“The title for this committee is the
Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction Task
Force; and one of the things I will not tolerate is racist and insensitive
comments about African Americans, the color of their skin. You mentioned what
we eat — I was highly offended by your remarks,” Fields said, addressing Marble
directly.
“I will not engage in a dialogue where
I’m in the company where you are using the stereotype references about African
Americans and chicken and food and all kinds of things. I will just not
tolerate that,” Fields continued.
“This is not what this committee is all
about. So I will ask that you suspend your perceptions and judgments about
African Americans, about poverty — what we’re trying to do is come up with
solutions and it’s not about chicken.
As far as Ms. Marble
is concerned, she is now the epitome of a comedian whose watch phrase is “You
can’t fix stupid”.
No, you cannot, you
can only vote it out of office.
Buried in Marble's comments is a salient point about the unavailability of nutritious diets for the poor. What poor people eat - or don't eat - is an extremely important issue, as the DPE's post on food deserts explained.
ReplyDeleteMarble's confusion of the unavailability of nutritious food with race-based preferences for eating unhealthy food makes her statements even more damaging. By approaching a serious issue in an insensitive and ignorant way, she makes it more difficult for the issue to be approached intelligently.
It's even worse than that, as studies like this
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5001
are finding that fruit juice, which we all thought was healthy and helpful is now being identified as a major problem.
Sugary drinks, including juice, are a blight. The ready availability of sugary drinks in large quantities is one of the leading causes of the obesity epidemic.
ReplyDeleteJuice carries the additional problem of seeming healthy when it really isn't. Juice contains the sugar found in fruit but not the fiber, which balances out the detrimental effects of sugar.
Absolutely true. And yet there is a big push to substitute juice for cola in schools. So low income children that get school breakfast and lunches . . .
ReplyDelete