Brickbat: In the Mind's Eye

How to Make an American Quilt

It started with a group of high school students presenting a quilt they'd made as a gift to the Martinsville, West Virginia, city council. It ended with one council member accusing the students of racial insensitivity and reducing some of them to tears. Students from the Piedmont Governor's School made the quilt, and they were trying to explain how each of the squares represented their educational journey. But council woman Sharon Brooks-Hodge was fixated on a black figure on the quilt, calling it offensive to blacks and a "negative image." Even after students explained that it represented them at the start of their journey, she still insisted it was offensive. When questioned about her remarks by a local TV station, Hodge said "I am not one of your locally home grown house negroes. I don't shuffle, I don't tap dance, and I don't take out the garbage."

Comments

[Res Publica Americana]

What a malignant retard. No wonder she's a city councilman.

[WTF]

Check your white, non-mentally challenged privilege!
/progtard

[PS]

"I am not one of your locally home grown house negroes. I don't shuffle, I don't tap dance, and I don't take out the garbage."

Any black person who isn't a professional victimologist is a house negro, and God forbid if they dare to hold any views that aren't congruent with liberal doctrine.

[Fist of Etiquette]

From the article it seems that she's anti-public education, pro-segregation. She may actually be a kind of black klansman. She's a champion of her people in the race war.

[invisible furry hand]

that's klanswoman, you repulsive heteronormative phallocrat

[Fist of Etiquette]

My penis and I stand corrected.

[db]

This might be one of the weirder fetishes ever recorded.

[PS]

What has been othered can never be un-othered.

[Zeb]

Well, now you're being cis-normative.

[db]

Sounds like she has a lot to say about her "locally grown" constituents...

[Robert]

I agree with her: She's not a negro, she's a nigger. Does every city council have to have a Charles Barron?

Look at the picture, and her rxn is simply jaw dropping.

[invisible furry hand]

From the comments:

Lesson learned: politicians are jerks. If you want to make a quilt, donate it to an nursing home or homeless shelter to be used by someone who will be grateful for it instead of spoiled worthless political hacks.

[db]

This. Government is the realm of petty power and manipulation of others. It is populated by sociopaths who will say and do anything to get elected, and expecting sociopathic behavior to cease once it has accomplished its goal is folly.

[Gene]

If the child would have used a white figure instead would that be better for her? The evolved figure was gold not white, someone help me here.

[db]

The councilwoman seems to be hung up on the idea of the black figure being a symbol of ignorance, of a void, and equating this to commentary on people with dark skins. It's clear that the students' meaning was, perhaps in typical angsty teen poetry style, to rather dramatically claim they were void until the beauty of public schooling was showered upon them. Which is in itself, retch-inducing.

[WTF]

Or rather, racial-grievance-mongering ignoramus seizes upon percieved opportunity to feign offense and make a scene. I doubt she was was really hung up on anything.

Although it's kind of funny that the councilwoman loudly displayed her ignorance while protesting that the black figure shouldn't portray ignorance.

[Robert]

Actually, if you read the article, it wasn't about the beauty of public schooling, but of a hydroelectric dam! Possibly some metaphor was intended.

[some guy]

As a gold person I am tired of this "superman" stereotype. I live in fucking squalor and can barely spell my own name. I have to side with the councilwoman on this. That kid was a dick

[derpules]

racist

[Scarecrow Repair]

Colorist

[Auric Demonocles]

Then they would have been racistly excluded blacks.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Hodge is already on record as being critical and admittedly uninformed on the City's educational system.

As far as targets for ridicule go, this woman seems like low hanging fruit.

[anarch]

I see what you did there.

[Mainer2]

Strange comment.......

[anarch]

http://www.cswnet.com/~menamc/langston.htm

[Mortimer Sneed]

If white people had a country of their own, this wouldn't be happening.

[Lord Peter Wimsey]

Uh...isn't that the kind of thing this ignorant council woman would say?

[Auric Demonocles]

Joseph: Let me ask you something... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the niggers, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?

Edward: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

[Night Elf Mohawk]

"Ms. Brooks-Hodge, when you are in the dark, what color do you see?"

[WomSom]

Sometimes man you jsut have to roll that beautiful bean footage!

http://www.GoGetAnon.tk

[Flatulent Monkey]

Anonobot, you need for some one to defrag your hard drive.

[Robert]

I get it, "bean" footage. Anonbot's on target again.

[SugarFree]

No heroes here, just various degrees of bootlicking and hysteria.

[Jerryskids]

Yeah, I have to agree. Presenting a quilt you made as a class project to the city council as an expression of gratitude for your enlightenment by the public school system? You sorta deserve whatever treatment you get from your lord and master. Brickbats all around on this one.

[db]

Yeah. As I said above, the model of student as tabula rasa until the public school system bestows its golden shower of knowledge is fairly retch-inducing.

[Rich]

"I don't take out the garbage."

That is evident in spades.

[anarch]

I will deny that I see what you did there.

[Rich]

RACIST!

[Flatulent Monkey]

Spades! Racist!

[Flatulent Monkey]

I don't trust women with hyphenated names. Maybe that makes me a probable rapist, but I stand by that.

[Mainer2]

Never trust a woman with her hyphen intact

[anarch]

You call that tact?