Raw Story reported in Minnesota GOP official: ‘I’m not going to condemn’ group’s Facebook post on slavery that Republican Party of Minnesota state secretary Chris Fields was parting company with MNGOP state party chair Keith Downey on the Chisago County GOP Facebook page firestorm.
It's not the first time Fields has gone against expectations on racially-charged discourse. Speaking to the Freeborn County Republicans in July 2013, Fields told those assembled that he shared their fear of Minneapolis, and that Trayvon Martin's upbringing and rap music contributed to the young Florida man's death.
In Minnesota GOP official: ‘I’m not going to condemn’ group’s Facebook post on slavery, Raw Story's Travis Getty's reports:
A Minnesota Republican official says he doesn’t see anything wrong with a post about slavery on a county GOP Facebook page.
The Chisago County Republican Party drew national attention Wednesday after posting an illustration of a slave auction with the caption, “Pro Choice: Against Slavery? Don’t buy one.” . . .
While DFL chair Ken Martin and RPM chair Keith Downey agreed that the image was offensive, Fields did not:
But the state’s Republican Party secretary, Chris Fields, said he wasn’t bothered by the post, saying he found “absolutely nothing offensive about that (Facebook) post.”
Fields said that as a black man he found slavery reprehensible but saw the post as a reminder that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist party at a time when the Democratic Party supported slavery.
“I’m not going to condemn that posting,” Fields said, although he said the post could have benefitted from additional explanation.
Running contrary to conventional wisdom seems to be the signature of the Fields franchise. In his 2012 contest against Keith Ellison, Fields accused the Minneapolis Democrat of having daddy issues, of not doing enough for black people, and practicing "reverse racism."
Speaking in July in a rambling 43-minute soliquoy on Courage, Commitment and Sacrifice, delivered to a rally sponsored by the Freeborn County Republicans, Fields ranged from reading a letter home from an Ivy League-educated Union soldier killed in the Civil War to the factors contributing to the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin.
Here's the section where Fields discusses Martin's death:
After stating that Obama and others "haven't even scratched the surface" as they made it "about guns and what it's like to be a black teenager" but they hadn't:
. . .talked about one of the most critical components. . . .On the Fourth of July weekend, 45 people were shot in Chicago. On the Fourth of July weekend. Black on Black violence. Why are we not talking about that?
Why are we not talking about the fact that our cities are being ruined? I don't blame any of you for not wanting to leave in Minneapolis. [crosstalk] Driving up there, I don't [soundg garbled], somebody else got shot. Why are we not talking about that?
Instead, they want to politically exploit this one case, okay? Nobody was there. There were only two people there. The two people who could agree on what happened and only one of them can speak. And it is what it is.
We have to get to the bigger problem. Okay, if we look at who's getting kicked out of school, in the first grade, second grade, on up to twelfth grade, not too many Asian girls are getting kicked out of school for behavior problems, okay? The fact of the matter is that culture matters, and there's something in the African American community that is causing these actions to continue, okay, and we'll have another Trayvon Martin, unless they get in there and start talking about the real issues.
Let's start talking about parents being held not accountable for their actions, let's start talking about all this rap music ...they'll go oh yeah well that's nothing, well guess what, look at what it produces, does it produce this violent behavior, or this culture where you're free to start talking to adults any way you want to?
I can tell you this, I have a 22-year-old son. There is no way on earth my 22-year-old son would have been in that position at any age. He's taught better. He could have ran the other way, he could have said, hey this guy's crazy, whatever the case is. He could have said, "No sir, I'm here, I'm not doing anything [raises his hands] I don't have any--do anything he could to let this guy know he wasn't a threat, and when that didn't work, he could have hightailed it the other way.
And I would suspect that most of your children would do the same thing. So there's something going on in that community that needs to be addressed, but you know what, no courageous steps are being taken to address it.And I think it's high time we took it--we do.
I tell you what: all of us are going to pay for it. All of us are going to pay the price. We're already going to pay for a federal investigation to figure this thing out. We going to pay for it in other ways. People are already going around calling this person a racist, that person a racist and all that stuff, and all of that is going to take us down. . . .
Heckova discourse.
Screenshot: From the Chisago County GOP's Facebook page. The image was removed and the county unit apologized.
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