The full statement is on her official website, but the site server is down at the moment (presumably it was overloaded by the mountains of angry protests that followed her comments in Oklahoma’s state house yesterday). Right Wing Watch quotes from her statement of “apology.”
Yesterday [April 27], Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern made news when she “we have a high percentage of blacks in prison” because they don’t want to work hard and “didn’t study hard because they said the government would take care of them.”Naturally, that comment generated a lot of outrage and so last night Kern released a statement assuring everyone that she is in no way racist because “my husband and I serve in an inner city church ministering to people of every race because we love all people” … but mostly just accusing the press of misrepresenting his views by taking her statements out of context:
I want to humbly apologize for any statements last night about women and African Americans. My words were, obviously, not spoken correctly and for that I humbly apologize. Unfortunately, when we take “words or sentences” out of the total context of a speech debated on the floor, there can be false misrepresentations, but the most important part is to always go to the heart of the matter.
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We live in a sound bite society and our media likes to take only a portion of a dialog and use just a slice of it. You can take a portion of something someone says and make it say anything you want it to say. Without a doubt, what I said was poorly stated and did not convey the meaning I wanted to get across for this I am truly sorry and humbly apologize.
The Tulsa World reported Rep. Kern’s comments on Wednesday. The article quoted from those comments, and also provided the video, from the Oklahoma state house floor, of the entire debate on the amendment that would rescind Oklahoma’s affirmative action law. Contained in that full, complete debate are Rep. Kern’s full, complete comments, from which the aforesaid quotes were taken. I have watched that portion of the video, heard Kern’s quoted remarks in their full, complete context, and that context did nothing to make her comments less racist. I say this because, in the comments section to my original post on this matter, one reader complained that the Tulsa World misrepresented Kern’s remarks by quoting them out of context — and having now heard that context, that claim falls flat. First, it’s not accurate to say the Tulsa World quoted Kern out of context, since the entire debate — not just Kern’s own remarks, but the entire debate — is there in that video that sits in that Tulsa World article. And second, that context does nothing to exonerate Kern. Her remarks are just as racist in context as they sounded in the part of her remarks that was quoted in the news coverage of this story.
I invite you to watch and listen for yourself. The Tulsa World article is here, and the video is in the article, clearly identified. You will have to download Microsoft Silverlight to view the video if you don’t already have it, but I downloaded it, and it’s well worth it. (The article says it’s slow to download — it wasn’t for me, but I guess that depends on the speed of your computer.)
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