What’s going on in Los Alamitos? Why did Mayor Dean Grose send this email?
Grose’s e-mail included the picture with a heading that read, “No Easter Egg hunt this year.”
“I think he’s saying that since there’s a black president, there will be no need to hunt for eggs since they’re growing watermelons in the front yard this year,” [Keyanus] Price wrote.
She responded to the e-mail with: “Hey, that’s not nice at all. Not all black people like watermelon… you should know better than that.”
Grose replied: “The way things are today, you gotta laugh every now and then. I wanna see the coloring contests.”
Price said Grose’s response upset her more.
“As soon as I saw his response; that put me over the top because it was no big deal to him,” she said.
I guess America still isn’t “post-racial” and Orange County still has a “racism problem”. How could something like this ever be considered “acceptable humor”? While it’s not quite as crudely horrific as the now infamous “New York Post Chimp Cartoon“, it nonetheless does the same deed in furthering ugly racial stereotypes. So thanks to the great Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose, the rest of the nation and the world once again look at Orange County and wonder what the hell we’re thinking.
News reports say Mayor Grose can’t be found for comment. Can anyone confirm the report he is in NY interviewing for the editor’s job at the NY Post?
A key Grose supporter: Jim Silva. Enough said.
The fact that there was extremely bad judgment on the part of one person does not indict the rest of the County, supporters, and/or indicate there is a racism problem in OC. Let’s be more positive about the community in which we live in hopes that it is just that.
I am tri-racial, (Black/White and Hispanic), and grew up in nice and White OC in the 70s. I rarely had issues growing up in OC, and that was back then. I know that the county as a whole has progressed. I lived it. This just shows that any IDIOT can get elected to the position of Mayor… Wow; what a legacy. A man gets elected to the position of mayor, and whether or not he felt and/or believed in racism, or “really didn’t think he offended anyone” basically, is forced to resign. Any way you look at it; what a nincompoop… Just think; he may think that he is of the superior race. Proof’s in the puddin’…
As a black person with a sense of humor, there are a couple of observations that I thought were interesting about this episode. #1, Grose stated that he was unaware of the racial stereotype that black people like watermelons. This is not very believable because the attempted humor would make any sense. If you replace watermelons with strawberrys the joke would still be incomprehensible unless there was some connection between strawberrys and the whitehouse. The joke would have been legitimately funny if watermelons were replaced with peanuts and President Carter were in office. #2 “Hey, that’s not nice at all. Not all black people like watermelon… you should know better than that.†One can infer from this statement by Keyanus Price that the Mayor’s worst error was that he was overgeneralizing about black watermelon consumption. Perhaps this misses the point. Of all the potentially hurtful connections between anything and black people, eating watermelons has to be the most innocuous. So innocuous as to be totally unfunny. If you’re gonna make fun of our Harvard educated, articulate, confident, no-nonsense President, then be funny and make it relevant. Who could disagree that eating watermelons especially in the warm southern states is an activity that could be shared by everyone regardless of skin tone.