{"id":32915,"date":"2013-08-17T02:38:26","date_gmt":"2013-08-17T02:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=32915"},"modified":"2013-08-17T18:29:26","modified_gmt":"2013-08-17T18:29:26","slug":"obama-rodeo-clown-incident-illustrates-nation%e2%80%99s-continued-racial-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=32915","title":{"rendered":"Obama rodeo clown incident illustrates nation\u2019s continued racial divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama rodeo clown incident illustrates nation\u2019s continued racial divide<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2013-08-15<\/p>\n

Philip Rucker<\/strong><\/p>\n

SEDALIA, Mo.<\/a> \u2014 As some people at the Missouri State Fair see it, the rodeo<\/a> incident last weekend in which a ringleader taunted a clown wearing a mask of President Obama<\/a> and played with his lips as a bull charged after him was neither racist nor disrespectful.<\/p>\n

It was a joke, they said, overblown by a news media that\u2019s hypersensitive to any possible slight against the nation\u2019s first black president. They said the hooting and hollering from the crowd that night was because of a fundamental dislike of the president.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got no respect for him,\u201d said Virgil Henke, 65, a livestock farmer who explained his distaste for Obama with several falsehoods about his background<\/strong>: \u201cWhy, he\u2019s destroyed this country. How much freedom have we lost? I don\u2019t care whether it\u2019s a black man in office, but we have to have a true-blooded American. I think he is Muslim and trying to destroy the country, catering to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt<\/a>.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…There is a long history of mocking politicians at rodeos, and clowns have donned masks of other presidents as part of their acts. But James Staab<\/a>, a political science professor at the University of Central Missouri, said last week\u2019s incident \u201cgoes beyond the pale \u2014 they\u2019re talking about physical injury and racial stereotypes.\u201d…<\/strong><\/p>\n

…\u201cI was raised to think the blacks were bad; I\u2019m not gonna lie. We lived on one side of the tracks, and they lived on the other,\u201d said Margaret Abercrombie, 68, who is white and grew up along the Mississippi River<\/a> in Sikeston, Mo.<\/a><\/p>\n

Abercrombie said she voted twice for Obama but didn\u2019t find anything wrong with the rodeo act. As she rode her motorized wheelchair to the grandstands at the rodeo arena, which on this day hosted tractor pull races, Abercrombie said the anti-Obama sentiments she encounters are based on race.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou hear the farmers here, they just don\u2019t like him because he\u2019s black,\u201d Abercrombie said. Pointing across the fairgrounds to the cattle barns, she added, \u201cI\u2019m surprised they ain\u2019t got a cow over there named Obama.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama rodeo clown incident illustrates nation\u2019s continued racial divide The Washington Post 2013-08-15 Philip Rucker SEDALIA, Mo. \u2014 As some people at the Missouri State Fair see it, the rodeo incident last weekend in which a ringleader taunted a clown wearing a mask of President Obama and played with his lips as a bull charged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,26,20],"tags":[15443,773,15442,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-32915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-james-staab","tag-missouri","tag-philip-rucker","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}