ABOVE: George W. Bush with his friend, Tramm Hudson
Unlucky 13: With Virginia Republican Sen. George Felix Allen still taking blowback over his use of the Tunisian racist term “maccacca” to describe a man of Indian descent, in Florida, Tramm Hudson, a GOP candidate for the 13th District House seat Rep. Katherine Harris is vacating to run for Senate, had this to say about the swimming abilities of African Americans:
“I grew up in Alabama and I understand, uh…I know this from my own experience; blacks are not the greatest swimmers, or may not even know how to swim.”
Mr. Hudson sounds like just the right fit to fill Katherine Harris’s empty pumps.
Forgot to tip the hat to Charlie at the Garnet Donkey for this story.
Connect:
Racism is part and parcel of the Republican Party of the New South with the PRE CIVIL WAR MINDSET!
To expect that ANY such “Republican” candidate will be anything but a “JIM CROW” candidate is to fly in the face of historical reason. Note that the black members of the same party are as “UNCLE TOM” as they can be, of whom Clarence Thomas is a prime example.
Here is a simple clue: If you see a “photo-op” with George W. Bush embracing a “candidate OF ANY COLOR, you should KNOW immediately that the “candidate” is either “JIM CROW” of “UNCLE TOM”—others NEED NOT APPLY!
“I grew up in Alabama and I understand, uh…I know this from my own experience; whites like Tramm Hudson have very small penises, in fact, Mr. Hudson may even be hung like a hamster.”
A fuss is being made by the Vern Buchanan campaign about a few words extracted from comments made by Tramm Hudson some time ago about his experience in the US Army during river crossing training in Panama, when one of his soldiers almost drowned. The first statement is from Tramm and the second is from my wife Frances Rice.
Perhaps of interest, Peter Rice
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Tramm Hudson’s words from a blog that has the transcript:
1984 we were in Panama. Our unit was doing a two-week training down there. I commanded an infantry company and we were practicing crossing a river. You know, an infantry company has 140 some-odd soldiers. A large number were black. I grew up in Alabama and I understand and I know this from my own experiences that blacks aren’t the best swimmers or may not even know how to swim. But we were crossing this and wanted to make sure every soldier could swim and if they couldn’t we’d get them across the river. We had the line across the river and we were making our passage way and one of the black soldiers with his ruck-sack on his back, his weapon and fell from the line…he let go. Sunk down to the bottom of the river. And I’ve got to tell you, it took my breath away. Two of the sergeants manning the boats immediately jumped into the river and pulled that soldier out form below. They gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitations and we called in a medivac helicopter to take him to the hospital. That soldier could have died. I believe it was divine intervention. That was a Saturday afternoon. And that next morning we had a worship service among our NCOs and our officers. And I led that worship service. And I think, in terms of answering your question that if we allow congress or the federal government to remove that from the chaplain’s core that would be just terrible. And I believe that being able to worship and to express out religious beliefs if it’s in the military, so be it. Or if it’s alone as individuals, you would find me defending that. I’ll just pass this around because this was manifold when I read about the law that someone was trying to pass.
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Statement of Frances Rice
“I am a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and an African American woman. Like Tramm, I commanded troops in the field. I reviewed the complete video tape of his remarks about the river crossing in Panama and do not find it offensive. It shows an awareness and concern for his troops and quite possibly was the reason the soldier was rescued so promptly. I have direct experience with racism and know what racism is. Tramm’s remarks were not racist. To take his words out of context and portray this as something it is not, is the height of demagoguery and smacks of race baiting.”
Frances Rice – Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, Retired
Sarasota, FL
941-922-1225
Chairman of the National Black Republican Association
Please visit the Internet site of Tramm Hudson at: http://www.trammhudson.com/
Sorry, Peter Rice and Col. Frances Rice, but I grew up in Jim Crow North Carolina and I know racism when I hear it coming out of the mouths of even perhaps well-meaning but unreconstructed white Southerners like Tramm Hudson.
In its full context, what is the story Hudson is telling about? It’s about how, even though he is white, he went out of his way to make sure the black soldier was saved from drowning.
In fact, the race of the soldier who fell in the river is absolutely irrelevant. Why did Hudson make an assumption about the swimming abilities of the solider? He made it for no other reason than the man’s race.
That is prima facie racism.
The story should have gone like this: “A soldier fell in the river, but, thank God, we were able to rescue him. The next day we prayed for him.”
In Concord, NC, where I went to high school in the early 1970s, the pool downtown was well-attended by my black schoolmates who swam as well as anybody.
The ability to swim is not determined by race. It is determined by proximity to water, the desire to learn how to swim and other cultural influences. But race is not a factor.
For non-Southerners who may be reading this, let me clue you in: There is a long-standing bromide in the South that people from Africa are physiologically unable to swim — that their bodies are not adapted to water.
That’s what Tramm Hudson was referencing in his story about rescuing the soldier from the river. And it is this fact that the Rices are trying to spin.
Shame on them.