MOCKIN’ WORD
Al defends ‘chitlin’ talk as appeal to activism, health
THE REV. AL Sharpton fired back at critics taking him to task for using racial stereotypes in a speech on Martin Luther King Day.
“We will not allow others to create distractions that divert our attention from the true purpose of Dr. King’s day,” Sharpton said in a statement Tuesday.
He slammed the Daily News’ front-page coverage of the controversy a day after he told a mostly black crowd, “On your birthday, we’ll eat chitlins and watermelon and drink some sweet iced tea because that’s what you do.”
“Today’s silly New York Daily News front-page distortion of my mockery of stereotypes is clearly a distraction to what we are dealing with in America today,” Sharpton said in his sharply worded statement.
The civil rights activist made the eyebrow-raising remarks Monday at the National Action Network offices in Harlem as part of a rebuke to people he thinks don’t take Martin Luther King Day seriously enough.
“A lot of folks don’t believe in public policy,” Sharpton said Monday in a leadup to his cringeworthy comment. “But this is not their holiday. This is Dr. King’s day. This ain’t your birthday.”
Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo were present for the event but came after Sharpton made the remarks.
Asked by The News on Monday about the remarks, Sharpton insisted that he was trying to make a point about community involvement and weight loss. He said he used to eat those foods on his own birthday, before his weight loss, and knew many in the crowd also eat those foods.
“I’m mocking people who take holidays to eat bad food and play into old stereotypes,” Sharpton said Monday. “I’m mocking them because that’s not what Dr. King was about.”
Sharpton’s lengthy Tuesday statement called critics of his comments “completely wrong.”
“When a member of a group admonishes some of his own people in order to reinforce important principles of that same group (in this case what Dr. King was all about) it is completely different from an outsider using a stereotype,” he said in the statement.
Sharpton’s remarks were blasted by some online commentators. A Facebook poster named Eddie Villegas called him “a disgrace to MLK.”
Brendan Hammerle added, “Why does anyone listen to anything Al Sharpton says?”
Dena Stokel wrote, “Good God. MLK probably rolled over in his grave.”
But Glenda Powell Smallwood wrote on Facebook, “If Dr. King was alive he would be marching with those three (Sharpton, de Blasio and Cuomo) to raise the minimum wage.”