It’s a shame to be unproud of your hometown, but my
hometown, Mountain Home, Ark., makes it pretty damn easy to be so.
For the second time in just a few years Mountain
Home made national news for doing something extremely prejudiced. A few years
ago the city made national news when the local Harps grocery store inserted a
censorship sticker over rock and roll hall of famer Elton John and his husband
David Furnish with their adopted child on a magazine cover.
A few weeks ago the city entered the news again when
Ozark Tea Party board member Inge Marler told a racist joke at a Tea Party rally
in Mtn. Home on June 9. Speaking in a fake black dialect Marler said:
“A
black kid asks his mom, ‘Mama, what’s a democracy?’
“‘Well, son, that be when white
folks work every day so us po’ folks can get all our benefits.’
“‘But mama, don’t the white folk get
mad about that?’
“‘They sho do, son. They sho do. And
that’s called racism.’”
The joke itself was disgusting
enough, but the truly repulsive thing about the story is that the large crowd
of around 500 people had a rather warm reaction to the joke, as reported by the
local newspaper The Baxter Bulletin.
Not a single person in attendance
stood up and said something or even walked out in disgust. Everybody just
seemed to be OK with the racially insensitive joke. In fact, it wasn’t until
being approached by a reporter of the Baxter Bulletin after the rally that Ozark
Tea Party founder Richard Caster admitted that the joke was in bad taste.
This leads me to believe that Caster,
who in 2010 became the youngest elected official in Arkansas history when he
was elected to the Baxter County Quorum Court, is frankly incompetent at his
leadership duties and should have effectively resigned his position. A true
leader would have immediately realized the problem, condemned Marler’s joke and
apologized for her actions and wouldn’t have waited until he realized that he’d
been caught by the press to do so; Caster, by the way, on his website claims
that he “will
always lead my life with honesty, integrity and hard work.” His
leadership in this situation doesn’t fit his statement.
Marler’s
joke and Caster’s handling of it aren’t the only ones at fault in the
situation. Anybody who laughed at the joke or really even remained in the
audience after its telling was supporting racism and prejudices.
The
fact that not a single person objected to the joke doesn’t mean that everybody
in the room was a racist, but it does mean that they’re OK with racism, which
is pretty much just as bad.
The
Tea Party has a bad image all across the country for being racist or at least
supporting racism. Despite the fact that many Tea Party members denounce this
as fact; the Ozark Tea Party has done a damn good job at either proving the
image to be true or at least furthering the image.
Now, this is only one group of
people in a city of over 12,000 residents, but there certainly seems to be a
recurring theme of insensitivity, racism, prejudice and hatred in Mountain
Home. When a city of this size is making national news multiple times in a
short span for these reasons then there is a serious problem. I’d like to be
proud of the city where I graduated high school and shared many of my most
precious memories, but I can’t be proud of it right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment