Gun Owners of America Embraces Racist 'Black Hurricane Names' Meme
Gun Owners of America Embraces Racist 'Black Hurricane Names' Meme
Earlier this week, the Congressional Black Caucus recommended that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee replace Janet Napolitano as the head of the Department of Homeland Security, so naturally the American Family Association’s One News Now turned to Gun Owners of America for comment.
Gun Owners of America is no fan of the DHS under Janet Napolitano – the group’s executive director, Larry Pratt, thinks the agency is raising a private army that will allow President Obama to overpower the US military.
But the group’s objections to Jackson Lee are unrelated. Seizing on a bizarre meme popular among Internet racists circa 2006, GOA spokesman Erich Pratt (Larry’s son), told One News Now that Jackson Lee thinks “one of the top pressing issues of our time ... is the group NOAA, which takes part in naming hurricanes. She thinks that they're racist because they don't use black-sounding names like ‘D’Shaun’ and ‘Keisha’ and ‘Jamal’ and names like that."
As Snopes explains, Jackson Lee did in fact express concern in a 2003 interview that “all racial groups should be represented” in NOAA’s hurricane names and hoped that the agency “would try to be inclusive of African American names.” Her comment then provoked a storm of anger among right-wingers including Rush Limbaugh and WorldNetDaily, which published a comment from a reader asking, “This is ridiculous. How about naming the storms after gang members, or infamous criminals?” It also spawned at least one horribly racist chain email.
And apparently the meme lives on, since Gun Owners of America – normally a leading light of racial reconciliation – is featuring it as its primary objection to a possible Jackson Lee nomination.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gun-owners-america-embraces-racist-black-hurricane-names-meme
= new reply since forum marked as read
Or at least they do at first glance.
These are also reasonably popular first names.
From the 1990 Census...
Alberto is 270th
Beryl is 948th
Christopher is 11th
Debby is 1,092nd (Deborah is 25th)
Ernesto is 335th
Florence is 107th
Gordan is 172th
Helene is 551st
Isaac is 277th
Joyce is 49th
Kirk is 288th
Leslie is 143rd
Michael is 4th
Nadine is 415th
Oscar is 151st
Patty is 373rd (Patricia is 2nd)
Rafael is 207th
Sandy is 322nd (Sandra is 16th)
Tony is 103rd (Anthony is 22nd)
Valerie is 149th
William is 5th
http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/1990surnames/dist.male.first
http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/1990surnames/dist.female.first
I would assume that Hispanic names would be somewhat more common now, but not too much so.
