NAACP award to Racist Communist who thinks Bush caused 9/11

[redrumloa]

NAACP to Honor Van Jones as 'American Treasure'
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02 ... -treasure/

Jones was a self-described "communist" during the 1990s and previously worked with a group dedicated to Marxist and Leninist philosophies. His comments, even in recent years, were often racially charged. He's blamed "white polluters and white environmentalists" for "steering poison" to minority communities. In 2005, he drew a distinction between white and black youths involved in shooting incidents by referencing the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

"You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never," Jones said. "They always say, 'We can't believe it happened here. We can't believe it's these suburban white kids.' It's only them!" he said. "Now, a black kid might shoot another black kid. He's not going to shoot up the whole school."

Such statements did not draw widespread attention until after a February video surfaced showing him calling Republicans "assholes" during an address in Berkeley, Calif. Jones apologized, but faced down his past again when it was discovered that he signed a 2004 statement calling on then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others to launch an investigation into evidence that suggests "people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

 

[ilwrath]

As best as I can find, the actual sentences in contention here are:

"We're really entering a third wave of environmentalism in the United States. The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities."

He chose poorly to mention color. But, is it an incorrect statement? Let's first examine elite/liberal=white and urban poor=colored. Is it largely true? (Most liberal elites are white? I'd say so... Most urban poor people are colored? Again, I'd statistically, I'd say so... [As an aside, this is not to say the inverses of these statements are true... there ARE many minority families that are not poor, and there surely are many white families that are not liberal/elite. But that is outside the argument here.])

So, if you take race out of the statement, you get "The elitist polluters and liberal environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of financially poor urban communities." And, if you look at the current situation, I'd say that is exactly correct. So it may have been a needlessly inflammatory statement, but I'd argue it was factually honest.

A lot of the current environmental strategy is to steer pollution into areas that already have infrastructure, and already have heavy industrial zoning. Those areas ARE your poor urban communities. Looking around Detroit and especially areas like DelRay, I'd say he's very insightful. Not necessarily that we target minorities, per se, but we certainly target areas where the current population are largely too poor to move away from it. So, in conclusion, do these strategies unproportionally effect minorities? Yes. Coming full circle, that is basically what he said.

"You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never," Jones said. "They always say, 'We can't believe it happened here. We can't believe it's these suburban white kids.' It's only them!" he said. "Now, a black kid might shoot another black kid. He's not going to shoot up the whole school."

This is taken so far out of context, it's not even funny. I wish I could find the original article on this. (Google is letting me down.) But the gist of it was him defending the image of the urban poor. Yes, there's guns in urban schools. Of course, there's guns in suburban schools, too. (Just used differently.) There's drugs in urban schools. There's drugs in suburban schools, too. (Just different ones.) We really aren't all that different. But when violence happens in suburbia, it's such a major disbelief. When it happens in the urban poor... Well, you almost had to EXPECT it... It's just them crazy minorities.

And as for the rest, it looks like he once signed a petition asking to investigate Bush. (Who wouldn't? -- I would.) He also called Republicans assholes. Hell, I continually take it a step further and call all career politicians assholes. Does this then mean I should now not be recognized for other contributions, as well?

I mean, I don't really know that much about Mr. Jones, but I don't really see that any of these things actually amount to any critical flaws.