Thread: North Carolina OBL advocate puts foot in mouth!

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/n ... tstory.jsp

Posted on Thu, Oct. 12, 2006

STORY PUBLISHED IN WASHINGTON POST

Remarks put Latino advocate on spot
Quote on how blacks, Hispanics are seen not meant to hurt, she says
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ
fordonez@charlotteobserver.com

Angeles Ortega-Moore has worked for years to build bridges between races.

Now the Latino activist is having to explain comments she made during an interview about how the public views blacks and Hispanics in Charlotte.

"It used to be everybody here loved the Latinos," she told a Washington Post reporter recently. "They would say, `We like you more than the blacks.' Now we're like the Big Bad Wolf.' "

Ortega-Moore, executive director of the Latin American Coalition, said Wednesday she regrets that her comments were hurtful to some. They were not intended to offend African Americans, she said.

She said her words were taken out of context and were part of a larger discussion regarding racially motivated policies.

The controversy comes at a time when some economists say blacks and Latinos are competing for certain jobs. Some employers have been quoted as saying they prefer Latinos over African American workers.

Ortega-Moore's comments appeared in a Post article last month about the Mecklenburg County sheriff's program to deport jailed illegal immigrants.

She said she received several calls following the story. Many felt her comments were insensitive. None of the calls came from Charlotte residents, she said.

Ortega-Moore said she was not expressing her views, but repeating statements made to her. Her point, she said, was to show that prejudice remains rampant in the Southeast and that communities of color are often used as scapegoats for U.S. social and economic problems. "The point was more than anything to show how the communities of colors are many times pinned against each other when issues of economic situations are arising," she said. "There is only so much abuse you can take."

A national Pew Hispanic Center poll released in March found that 10 percent of the public had unfavorable views of blacks while 18 percent held unfavorable views of Hispanics.

The poll had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

In Raleigh-Durham, one of the five regions the poll focused on, 9 percent of the public had unfavorable views of blacks versus 20 percent for Hispanics. Those figures had a margin of error of 5.5 percentage points.

The Charlotte Post, a weekly newspaper that covers the city's African American community, reprinted her comments .

City Councilman Warren Turner, a Democrat, who read the Charlotte Post story, said Ortega-Moore should have chosen her words more carefully. He said he was not offended, but he understood why some African Americans were.

"You muddy the water when you make statements like that," Turner said. "What do you gain from that, other than adding more racial division? My parents always told me, `Why would you repeat something that you don't believe in?' "

For someone with many ties to the black community, Ortega-Moore finds herself in an unexpected position.

She is married to a black man, John Moore, a former director of the Afro-American Cultural Center, and was once on its board. This past June, the Committee of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund honored her with a community service award.

Ortega-Moore has discussed building unity between the black and Latino communities since at least 2001, when she proposed a meeting to discuss tensions between both following reports that Hispanics had become a larger minority population.

Turner, who supports certain policies designed to curb illegal immigration, such as the sheriff's program, said it's wrong for Latino advocates to draw race into the illegal immigration debate.

"It's not a color issue," he said. "It's about right or wrong."

Ahmad Daniels, an activist in the African American community who has worked with Ortega-Moore, said people are afraid to address the issue through a racial lens, out of fear of being perceived as racist or insensitive.

"What Angeles said is correct. It's no different than comments that I have heard. The fact that she put it out there left her very vulnerable. She stepped out into that climate and they ate her up."

"It used to be everybody here loved the Latinos," she told a Washington Post reporter recently. "They would say, `We like you more than the blacks.' Now we're like the Big Bad Wolf.' "

Nothing at all to apologize for, Angeles.

You're simply rephrasing what your hero Vicente Fox said about your people "doing the work even blacks won't do".

Racism is a big part of your culture, and we understand that.

CountFloyd wrote:

Racism is a big part of your culture, and we understand that.

DING, we have a winner. Give the man his prize.

http://www.nclr.org/content/affiliates/detail/1144

Angeles Ortega-Moore is Executive Director of "Latin American Coalition".

"LAC" is an Affiliate of National Council of La Raza.



They are also funded by the United Way.

Stop Giving To The United Way or earmark your contributions to worthy causes.

http://www.thecharlottepost.com/news.html

This article has Angeles Ortega-Moore's picture in it and some more comments about her comment.

She really did put her foot in her mouth.



Crossing border of ethnic sensitivity?

Activist told newspaper
whites prefer Latinos to blacks

By Cheris F. Hodges
cheris.hodges@thecharlottepost.com

Latin-American Coalition Executive Director Angeles Ortega-Moore's description of how Charlotte handles immigration resulted in an apology to African Americans. "It used to be everybody here loved the Latinos," she told the Washington Post last week. "They would say 'We like you more than the blacks.' Now we're like the Big Bad Wolf."

The executive director of Charlotte's Latin American Coalition has come under fire for saying whites like Latinos more than blacks.

But Angeles Ortega-Moore said the comment, published last week in the Washington Post, was taken out of context and not meant to offend anyone.

However, some blacks are offended.

"I believe it was taken out of context," said Ortega-Moore who has been fielding angry e-mails since the Washington Post story, written by Peter Whoriskey, was published last Wednesday.

Ortega-Moore was quoted as saying Charlotte's immigration situation is "tense, very tense. It used to be everybody here loved the Latinos. They would say "We like you more than the blacks." Now we"re like the Big Bad Wolf."

Ortega-Moore doesn't deny that she made the comment, but said she was only repeating what whites have said to her and other Latinos in the Charlotte area.

"My intent was not to offend, but to show that within all these years, issues between whites and blacks have not been solved," she said.

Ortega-Moore said her comments were strictly intended to point out how public opinion consistently demonizes communities of color - using ethnic groups as the scapegoat for U.S. social and economic problems.

"Black and Latino communities are all too painfully aware of the prejudice that still runs rampant in the Southeast," Ortega-Moore said. "It is a terrible shame that our society insists upon alienating and dividing racial groups, when unity is the only way we can achieve social justice."

The Latin American Coalition released a statement the day after the article was published in hopes of clarifying Ortega-Moore's comments, stating the quote was taken out of context.

Whoriskey said he stands by his story and said Ortega-Moore was describing how the mood has changed in Charlotte toward Latinos.

"The reason I used the quote had nothing to do with the reference to blacks," he said. "If anyone is angry, they shouldn't direct it toward (Ortega-Moore) but to those who made that statement to her."

Dwayne Collins, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Black Political Caucus, said he'd reserve comment until he talks to Ortega-Moore, adding he doesn't think her words were meant to offend or belittle blacks.

"I don't think she meant to put anyone down," he said.

Calls to NAACP president Kenneth White were not immediately returned.

The Black Political Caucus is one group that works with the Latin-American Coalition on immigration issues. While often ignored, rifts between African Americans and Hispanics have become more apparent here and nationally. Some blacks express privately that Hispanics have driven down wages and taken away jobs that they would normally receive," Collins said, adding those issues should be taken up with employers who pay substandard wages to Latinos.

In a 2004 book "The Presumed Alliance: The Unspoken Conflict Between Latinos and Blacks and What it Means for America," author Nicolas Vaca asserts that Latinos and blacks have had a long acrimonious relationship. He writes that Latinos have no responsibility for the plight of African Americans.

Tanya Hernandez, a writer with the African American political web site Blackprof.com, wrote "social science studies of Latino racial attitudes often indicate a preference for maintaining social distance from African Americans. And while the social distance level is largest for recent Latin American immigrants, more established communities of Latinos in the United States are also characterized by their social distance from African Americans."

A recent study by Duke University revealed the Latinos come into the U.S. with negative stereotypes about blacks.

Paula D. McClain, a Duke political science professor and lead author of the study, said the findings are significant because the South has the largest population of blacks in the U.S. and has been defined more than other regions along a black-white divide. How Latino immigrants relate to blacks and whites " and how those groups relate to Latinos " has implications for the social and political dynamic of the region, she said.

"Given the increasing number of Latino immigrants in the South and the possibility that over time their numbers might rival or even surpass black Americans in the region, if large portions of Latino immigrants maintain negative attitudes of black Americans, where will this leave blacks?" the researchers wrote. "Will blacks find that they must not only make demands on whites for continued progress, but also mount a fight on another front against Latinos?"

In an interview, McClain added: "We're actually pretty depressed about a lot of our findings."

________

And you should be depressed. All this illegal immigration does is take opportunities away from Americans, many of whom have been struggling for generations for their piece of the American Pie, their shot at the American Dream including Equality and Acceptance. The last they need is an illegal group whining for what already belongs to those American Citizens...including Black and African Americans.

Pretty soon Charlotte could be just like LA where the prisons are racially segregated because of the riots between Hispanics and blacks.

Charlotte might also have the massive unrest in the school systems like that riot last year in the LA High School where 1,000 black and Latino students were running around screaming race riot and fighting hand to hand till the police marched into the school wearing riot gear.

Or perhaps Charlotte will share in the gang wars of S. Cali where the gang bangers are being tried for murdering people just because they are black.

The racist Hispanics that support illegal aliens for racist reasons are ready to grind black Americans in to the soil.

Just ask the black Mexicans. If you can find many left.

But they love little Penguin. lol

Anyone want to gather up all of the pictures in our archives that show all of those racist product ads in Mexico? Perhaps we should send a care package to black lawmakers near Charlotte and across the state so they can better understand Mexican culture.

"Black and Latino communities are all too painfully aware of the prejudice that still runs rampant in the Southeast," Ortega-Moore said.

Try Mexico on for size!



W

"The reason I used the quote had nothing to do with the reference to blacks," he said. "If anyone is angry, they shouldn't direct it toward (Ortega-Moore) but to those who made that statement to her."

Yeah right, how are we supposed to really know if anyone said that to her? Furthermore, if she didn't really believe it, she wouldn't have said it. A person with integrity would never make a racist comment in public and then attempt to shift the blame to others.

Let's face it, she expressed her true feelings. Now she needs to accept the consequences of her actions honorably, without deflecting blame.

Let's face it, she expressed her true feelings. Now she needs to accept the consequences of her actions honorably, without deflecting blame.

Well yes she does, but she is a liar. She said "now we're the Big Bad Wolf". As if before "now", Black and African Americans were the "Big Bad Wolf". She said that. No one else said that to her. Those were her words. She's a racist weenie and just panders to Blacks to gain political caucus support to get money to fund illegal aliens and her La Raza Cause for her Master Organization:

National Council of La Raza

to end the United States of America.