Rubber-Necking

Remember Reverend Meeks? The Chicago Mayoral candidate who ran his racist mouth off earlier this week saying,

“The word ‘minority’ from our standpoint should mean African American. I don’t think women, Asians and Hispanics should be able to use that title,” he said. “That’s why our numbers cannot improve — because we use women, Asians and Hispanics who are not people of color, who are not people who have been discriminated against.”

It seems that in the black community, that declaration was not a negative.

Meeks has been under fire since last week when he suggested that only African Americans should be eligible for city contracts set aside for minorities and women. He later backtracked.

But Wednesday afternoon, Meeks’ campaign spokesman Bryan Zises, while confirming the meeting took place, said Meeks was “very clearly not dropping out’’ despite the uproar about his remarks about minority set-asides.

“He’s gotten nothing but encouragement from people, particularly in the African-American community, for speaking out about the minority- and women-owned business program,’’ Zises said.

While I am not a fan of Haley Barbour's recent remarks, they are hardly more incendiary than those of Rev. Meeks, especially as Barbour's are looking backward and not his view of race relations today, but Meeks' brand of racism is forward-looking.

I don't understand why the Meeks blunder hasn't gotten more press. Oh, wait! Could it be because Barbour is a Republican and Meeks is a Democrat... and we all know that a Democrat, especially a prominent one, couldn't possibly be a racist?