Just caught wind of this simply incredible memo, apparently floating around Knoxville in case current mayor Bill Haslam leaves his post to take the Governorship:
A memo circulating in Knoxville’s political back rooms this week talks explicitly about the importance of electing a white mayor, should Haslam leave office, who could advocate for “a white agenda [that] would better enable us to have our interests respected by and our influence realized in any administration.”
“With the ‘White Mayor first’ approach there is an unstated assumption that having a white mayor in Knoxville is equal to having a white social, economic and political agenda or at least someone in office who would be sensitive to that agenda if not a full promoter of that agenda,” reads the memo, distributed and written at least in part by Knoxville-based political strategist Aaron Trupeau.
Of course, if you pay attention to the news at all, you know this isn’t happening in Knoxville. Given the ridiculousness of something like this happening, you were probably suspicious from the start. I’ll give: it’s Atlanta. And it’s not a memo purporting to advance the white agenda. It’s a memo that suggests Atlanta needs a black mayor so that he can push a “black agenda.” And just as you were no doubt disgusted at the overtly racist underpinnings of the “white agenda” memo above, I can only hope you are equally as appalled at the real memo.
The Christian Science Monitor, from which the altered memo above was taken, has more on this, and the article delves a bit more into the obvious outrage that would explode on the national news were the memo to actually read as I’ve printed it above.
Let’s quit pretending that we’re living in some post-racial utopia. Clearly we have a long way to go, and it’s not going to be solved by reverse racism either.
Update: Bill Whittle does a masterful job in doing what I attempted to do above:
