Today’s word/accusation is “lazy.” Charged: former New Hampshire governor John Sununu, who last week told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that President Obama’s debate performance showed how BHO is “lazy and detached” and “lazy and disengaged.”
Writing in today’s Hartford Courant, columnist Frank Harris says Sununu “delivered a blow way below the belt and far across the racial line.” More:
In his smug delivery, Sununu clearly knew what it meant to call someone black — the president, no less — lazy. It is one of those racial stereotypes so often used over the years for Americans of African descent.
If only Obama knew that. Maybe he wouldn’t have told Barbara Walters “I think there’s a laziness in me.”
Harris, who is chairman of the journalism department at Southern Connecticut State University, isn’t finished. More from He Who Determines Bigotry:
Sununu’s enmity toward Obama continues a nasty trend of disrespect for the president that has more than a few racial overtones. This particular stereotype of black people being lazy needs to die a quick and decisive death. But stereotypes die hard. No amount of exemplary work will change it.
Consider that in that second Louis-Schmeling fight, Louis demolished Schmeling in the first round. Did it end racism in America? Did it remove racial stereotypes? No and no. Accordingly, an Obama thrashing of Romney in the second debate will not bring an end to racism and racial stereotypes either.
Still Mr. President, make my day. Knock the fellow out.
Nice to know Southern’s wanna-be journalist majors are taught by this objective academic, no?