![]() ![]() The offender sits together with the offended, hears about the impact of their deed and discusses how to make it right. Owens said the incident would be a perfect candidate for a restorative circle of the kind seen in the district every day. And that speaks to the greater problem of racism in Rochester." It’s a shame so many people are coming to his defense, but that’s also a part of the huge racism piece that so many people are just denying that anything was wrong with it. "There’s no 'if' about it. I wish he would have apologized sincerely. "He said, 'If I hurt anyone' - well, you did," Owens said. If you did feel that it hurt you in any way, in any way, I sincerely apologize." Idonia Owens, chief of school equity in the Rochester City School District, said she was disappointed in Kappell's purported apology, when he said: "That is not a word I said, I promise you that. "It’s so ingrained in our collective psyche that unfortunately things like this are going to happen. We just have to keep doubling down on how we unlearn that." "I don’t think the media is exempt from race and racism issues in the country, just like police are not immune," he said. Underwood also agreed with Mayor Lovely Warren's larger point that the media in Rochester has work to do in improving its cultural awareness and stamping out bias.Ī survey last year showed that three-quarters of black Rochester-area residents feel the news, both print and broadcast, is overly negative toward people of color. … It sort of rips the scabs off old wounds." "Something like that retraumatizes people. "You’ve got to understand the hurt we feel when we hear that (word)," he said. John Fisher College students pulled down a statue of Frederick Douglass on Alexander Street. Focusing on intent rather than impact, he said, has the effect of shielding the wrongdoer from consequences in all but the most blatant cases. He likened the debate over Kappell's intent to the recent incident in which two intoxicated St. Jerome Underwood, CEO of Action for a Better Community and an experienced anti-racism educator, said the question of whether Kappell intended to say the slur is largely beside the point. ". Greenberg apologized later that day and ultimately kept his job. Local-television news anchor Matt Mosler in Little Rock, Arkansas and weatherman Mike Hernandez in San Antonio made virtually identical utterances during live broadcasts in 20, respectively.īoth kept their jobs after apologizing for what they said were inadvertent slips of the tongue.Īnd on the national stage, nine years ago ESPN's Mike Greenberg uttered "talking football with you on this Martin Luther Coon King Jr. Day." Blair said he stumbled over his words and apologized during later telecasts but still lost his job. One parallel case to Kappell's is Rob Blair, a Las Vegas weatherman who was fired in 2005 after saying the temperature would be in the mid-60s on "Martin Luther Coon King Jr. A judge was removed from the bench in Bemidji, Minnesota, after saying "Martin Luther Coon Day" twice. A small-town Alaska mayor named Coon said in 1991 that his surname gave him the right to call King "Coon" for some reason. James Earl Ray, who assassinated King in Memphis in April 1968, reportedly used both the "Coon" and "Lucifer" slurs to refer to the man he killed.Īs King's legend grew in the decades after his death, the slur became less common but still cropped up, largely in rural communities. Terrel Bell, education secretary during Ronald Reagan's first term, wrote in his memoir that White House staff members went a step further, calling King "Martin Lucifer Coon." King was struck in the head with a rock during a march in Chicago where white protesters shouted, "We want Martin Luther Coon! Kill the (n-word)s!" American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell and longtime U.S. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |