Racism is behind the effort to oust Greensboro City Council member Dianne Bellamy-Small, says The Pulpit Forum.
The Forum specifically called out fellow council member Florence Gatten, who called for Bellamy-Small’s resignation earlier this week:
“Let the misguided, dangerous action by Ms. Gatten be a reminder of the depths of racism and a clarion call for our community and all justice-loving people to unite,” a statement from the group said.
Meanwhile, Hoggard (I’m not picking on you, man) says he’s going to do the un-white thing:
An elected white person criticizes another elected black person for something that would be deemed understandable and defensible had it been white-on-white, or black-on-black criticism. But when said criticism (justified or not) crosses racial lines, charges of racism arise from the black community and there-they-go-again indignation arises within the white community.
For this to happen again and again in Greensboro, it should be obvious by now that we are doing something really wrong. All of us.
We need to change something, because what we are currently doing, or not, is clearly not working. But I fear our current leadership, both black and white, will be more interested in forwarding their entrenched and comfortable “assumptions and values” than taking the long-needed baby steps that might finally, mercifully, heal Greensboro’s racial chasms, be they real or perceived.
The Forum might be right when its says white leaders don’t receive due criticism in the mainstream media. But City Manager Mitchell Johnson and fellow city council member Sandy Carmany, not to mention assorted school board members, recently have taken plenty of heat in the alternative media and the blogosphere. With that in mind, I’d say the “call for justice” is spread pretty well across racial lines.
