Mayor Dean Grose of Los Alamitos, California, is under fire for an email he sent to a constituent showing a picture of the White House lawn superimposed with a watermelon patch (above). The email had the subject "No Easter Egg hunt this year."
Keyanus Price, who is African-American, is just one person who received the email, and she said:
"I was horrified when I read that e-mail. What I'm concerned about is how can this person send an e-mail out like this and think it is OK? He's putting the city into a bad place, and he is a liability."
Price also told the AP:
"I have had plenty of my share of chicken and watermelon and all those kinds of jokes. I honestly don't even understand where he was coming from, sending this to me. As a black person receiving something like this from the city-freakin'-mayor - come on."
Also according to AP, Grose said he was unaware of the racial stereotype that black people like watermelons.
Oh, come on. How many people try to get away with saying "I wasn't aware such-and-such a thing was racist?"
For those who might see this as all in good fun (as Grose did, when he said "Bottom line is, we laugh at things and I didn't see this in the same light that she did"), please. And if he is truly too ignorant to know that watermelons are a symbol of racism, and that this picture obviously flaunts that, perhaps he shouldn't be mayor.
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