– April 18, 2013Posted in: Blog Archives
In his prototypical racial-mongering fashion, Al Sharpton is crying foul over a CNN report that refers to a Boston marathon bombing suspect as “dark-skinned.” Or something like that.Specifically, he calls it “coded, offensive language” that was “shameful.”
“I want to be very careful about this because people get very sensitive when you say these things,” CNN reporter John King affirmed in the report. “I was told by one of these sources who is a law enforcement official, that this was a dark-skinned male…I’m not making a personal judgment, forgive me, but I think it’s the right judgement, not to try to inflame tensions.”
If Sharpton is going to say anything about the report, maybe he should point out that it was erroneous — that, in fact, there had not been an arrest.Sharpton on his MSNBC show Wednesday evening said the “reporting error” on the arrest was bad enough, but that he was “deeply troubled” by the “dark-skinned” descriptor. He cited the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, who called it “useless information that borders on inflammatory.”“These comments are very offensive, they have no place in our discourse, especially in a time when Americans are inspired by an example of the people in Boston coming together as one,” Sharpton said. “What King’s words did is to make every dark-skinned male in Boston a suspect, and that’s shameful.”
It will be interesting to see what Sharpton says about the actual photos and video the FBI released late today. The photos are somewhat fuzzy, so it’s difficult to make out the suspects’ skin colors. Suspect # 2, in my opinion, definitely looks dark-skinned — if not middle eastern, at least black or Hispanic.
Regardless of how it’s reported, Al will spin it in to some racial debacle. Anyhow, you can’t call ‘em black and you can’t call ‘em brown, you’d think “dark-skinned” would be one of the more subtle descriptions.
