Indiana Democratic representative accuses 18-month-old baby of racism
Yes, this is real life
Rep. Vanessa Summers understood the cries of an 18-month-old as racism.
According to the Washington Times:
Democratic Rep. Vanessa Summers made the comment during a debate on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the House, referencing Republican Rep. Jud McMillin’s child.
“I told Jud McMillin I love his son, but he’s scare of me because of my color,” Ms. Summers said to Mr. McMmillin, who is white, during last week’s debate, the Indy Star reported March 24.
Ms. Summers later defended her comment, recalling the meeting with Mr. McMillin’s son earlier in the session.
“He looked at me like I was a monster and turned around and cried,” Ms. Summer said, the newspaper reported. “And I told him you need to introduce your child to some people that are dark-skinned so he will not be scared.”
Mr. McMillin said Ms. Summers‘ comment was “unfortunate.”
Take a look:
It’s becoming near impossible to discern parody from seriousness with this crowd.
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Comments
This is how a large segment of our society thinks. They see a timid little toddler and immediately take a selfish attitude. Look how oppressed I am! Maybe the kid is shy around ALL strangers? Maybe that scowl that’s permanently frozen on your face scared him, irrespective of your skin color? Maybe you just radiate hatred because of your racist world view?
And this is the attitude that the Dims gin up to keep their “base” energized. It’s destructive and they know it, but it keeps them in power so they keep on tearing us all down.
“It’s becoming near impossible to discern parody from seriousness with this crowd.”
“Becoming”????
The author needs to get out more.
I think the kid looked at the woman and figured he was breakfast … or lunch … or dinner.
Hugely fat people can be scary to a little one who hasn’t had much contact with same.
I imagine she frightens her fair share of adults as well.
WOW !!
What an idiot !!!!
From under what rock did the people of Indiana dug this moron out ?!!
And how can such a bigot fairly represent the people of her state?
“how can such a bigot fairly represent the people of her state?”
I’ll bet the people in her district agree with her.
Uh, saying that a baby is scared of someone with black skin is not the same as saying that the baby is racist…
Making the assumption in the first place that fear is based on skin color is where the idiocy begins.
But of course, the fear must be based on skin color, right anoNY? The assumption must be made that all of the white republicans in the chamber didn’t scare the kid, but the one black woman he did encounter scared him? If Dims couldn’t make race a subject, there would be no dim party.
My point was that the lady didn’t call the kid a racist.
Thus, the title of this article is a lie.
Same way, most of us have never called you an idiot.
And of course it’s not the same as saying, “He looked at me like I was a monster.”
And how do you determine that a baby is frightened by skin tone? Perhaps it’s the racist in you?
All babies go through fear periods, fear of strangers being one of them. This woman is an idiot and I think she’s projecting her own hate onto this child.
I have a theory that small children have a great intuitive and discerning capacity that is unalloyed by socialization.
I base that partly on the fact that they love me…
Rags, the kids who reply to you don’t seem to love you. They don’t see the jurisprudence in your eyes.
Those are NOT children. They are imps. Possessed…
or, in your case, some are EXCEPTIONAL liars 🙂
Are we sure that Rep. Summers isn’t angling for a job with SNL? Or maybe with the Obama Justice Department? Maybe she will be the spokesperson for Madam Hillary?
Wow! Babies are now being used as social barometers.
I axe u what kinda crazy is tat.
When all you hold is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If you look hard enough for something, you will see it everywhere. Even if it doesn’t really exist.
(Put a ? Mark after “tat” or I will call my fixer Sharpton.)
Lady let’s be honest. We are all racist. That is we all carry a set of experiences memories by which we categorize new personalities until the individual presents specific traits that render the presuppositions irrelevent or sometimes accurate. It works both ways of course. For iexample I love Newfies and Cape Bretoners. I love their accents, their music, their humor, their warmth. Does that mean I love, say, Hungarians less. Yup. I never met an Aussie I did not like, but frankly not to crazy about the Nigerians I have had in my cab. Kenyan women, on the other hand, make my heart swoon. See I’m what you call an “adult” and yeah I have my personal portfoilio of likes and dislikes, up front, and I give people a chance to go against my stereotype – if my preonception is negative I hope they do and am disappointed if they do not, and vice versa.
A child has not yet formed such fine distinctions and an 18 month old well in a chance corrider encounter with a big woman like yourself maybe 20x, 30x, 40x the squirt’s weight (where was daddy btw, networking, schmoozing? And now headed for some dog-house time one suspects), a woman who perhaps emanates hostility and like the other contributor said projects her own hate suspision and self-consciousness, yeah the kid’s gonna bellow and run for the hills and skin color is unlikely to have been the trigger. Sorry. Just count it as a first impression – a startle then a mean old look gets filed away for the far future. (Horrors someone call a kindergarten teacher)
The white liberal “check your privilage” crowd is a patronizing condescending bunch and the black always-mad-at-someone and always keeping the awareness of racism current – well they for different reasons keep it going likehosts to cultural parasites.
I read the woman’s comments. Never did she say that the child’s reaction was because of “racism.” She said it was because of her “color.” They are not the same thing. And she’s probably correct. Infants can react poorly to new faces, and would certainly notice (and probably not react well) to not only a new face, but one of an obviously different color.
This looks to me that it is being spun by conservatives. C’mon guys, spin is for liberals!
I was apparently really freaked out by fat people when I was a toddler.
Why does she assume the kid was scared of her color, and not of her heft?
this is the first I’ve seen a comment by you so I’ll have to take my opportunity as it comes.
Here’s a link and a note that follows pertaining to some back and forth you and I had about my speculating on the possible uses of the out of work illegals that will soon be flooding our country.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/21/immigrant-police-officers/70236828/
I’ll be dropping this in on unrelated threads for Amy in Florida to see.
She was very skeptical of my outlining of what some Police forces (and perhaps at the behest of the Federal Gov’t) might do for extra assistance in policing. Especially in the light of the possibility that eventually those of us who see our Freedoms being reduced and our rights constrained might take action to thwart those measures.
I made the claim that with all the unemployed immigrants around, it would be a logical idea for some police forces to hire some of them to fill out their rosters. They would have the add benefit of being very willing to take any action ordered as they wouldn’t have any preconceived notion of the Bill of Rights and the Freedoms guaranteed by same.
Well, Amy from Florida, go to the link and you’ll see that some police departments are already lining up to employ immigrants as police and disregarding their inability to check their background.
So I guess it wasn’t such a crazy idea after all, Huh?”
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My guess is it is the application of the same filter that she used to determine that people critical of Obama’s tan suit were really critical of the “tan man”.
Read, dude.
Kids don’t start noticing skin color until around 3 1/2 – have you watched them color human figures? They will color them green, blue, silver – it isn’t until around age four that they start to wonder why people are different from them but even then it isn’t about race, just color.
But kids do start having separation anxiety and strangers sometimes trigger that. This woman is an idiot.
The kid was scared because she looks like a gorilla.
I have lots of red hair and freckles. I used to attend church with a Korean couple who had three little girls. Those babies would burst into tears every time they saw me. The parents were always embarrassed but eventually the girls outgrew their fright and we got along just fine.
Cue in Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton. This is just the very thing that they can exploit to the tune of millions of dollars and a piece of the action.
I understand the rejection she feels. But she’s wrong.
I remember being told to kiss my Aunt when I was maybe 3 or so and I refused. I think she always held that against me. (nothing overt just a feeling cause we didn’t come in contact that often).
But she was really big and had a fur coat on and perfume (she was dressed up for something) so I think all that just scared the heck out of me. She had a loud voice too.
So it could just be she scared the crap out of the kid because. Who knows why.
To take offense at that and on top of that claim it’s racist or something is just sick.
An 18 month old? You mean the age where they’ll all of a sudden run screaming from the grandma they love and see five times a week and jump into the lap of some stranger on the bus or in the park? I’m a psychologist. You can ascribe NOTHING to the 18 month old’s reaction. Look up ‘cognitive development in children’. 18 month olds do all sorts of insane things for completely opaque reasons, indeed, our adult mistake is to assume there is reason to be followed at all in that little rutabaga of a brain. There’s a reason you never take your eyes off an 18 month old. Adults who think and act like 18 month olds get locked up in mental hospitals. I have a whole bunch of kids. Six, I’m told. Dunno, can’t keep track. Got five grandkids, too, all boys. I need a goalie. That’s 11 total, every one of ’em 18 months old at some point. I have braved this tiger many many times. Hypothematize all you want, but you can never, ever truly know what an 18 month old kid’s thinking or why he’s thinking it. HE doesn’t know.
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I think I can clear this whole thing up if someone can find out how short her skirt was when she met the young fellow.
Uh, gee, you don’t suppose the toddler picked up on the political animus between Summers (D) and his (R) daddy?
I don’t remember my paternal grandmother; her name was Irene and she died when I was little. But my Mom tells me I would always cry around her. Who knows why? Maybe because she spoke Greek?
She never called the baby racist; the headline is a lie.
The comment was not made in a vacuum; it was part of a discussion about discrimination, possibly offered up as an object example.
Go look up young mother discussion sites and you’ll see tons of examples of babies being frightened by people who appear different–men with beards, other kids with red hair, white people if they’re used to black, and black people if they’re used to white. And all the mothers’ advice to those with frightened babies is to just give them a little more exposure to the unfamiliar face, and they’ll get over it.
Which is exactly Rep Summers’ point here: a white baby frightened by something new is an opportunity to help change discrimination as the child grows up. Just make sure the kid meets more black people.
The hysteria over this story is palpable. Crazy right wingers equate her saying a kid was scared by her black face as somehow the same as calling a baby racist. That is racist itself, not to mention irresponsible. I am appalled at the rush to misinterpret this woman’s thoughtful attempt to cite a present and simple example of how, unless we check it early in life, a fear of what’s simply different can eventually turn into racism.
She accused the baby of being afraid of her BECAUSE of her color. The implication being the parents aren’t doing their duty by introducing the child to people of color. She may not have used the term “racist” but the implication was in big, bold letters.
“I told Jud McMillin I love his son, but he’s scare of me because of my color,” Ms. Summers said to Mr. McMmillin, who is white, during last week’s debate, the Indy Star reported March 24.
Ms. Summers later defended her comment, recalling the meeting with Mr. McMillin’s son earlier in the session.
“He looked at me like I was a monster and turned around and cried,” Ms. Summer said, the newspaper reported. “And I told him you need to introduce your child to some people that are dark-skinned so he will not be scared.”
Exactly.
Maybe the kid wasn’t scared of black people, but of fat people. Or of any number of other things. As our Henry Hawkins points out, 18-month-olds are not exactly the most rational creatures on the planet. Maybe it was even her glasses, or her deep voice, or maybe he just had gas!
“He looked at me like I was a monster and turned around and cried, and I told him you need to introduce your child to some people that are
dark-skinnedfat so he will not be scared.”See? Why does she automatically assume that the baby’s problem is racism, and not fat-ism? This lady is race-baiting an 18-month-old baby, straight up. She deserves to be called out for that.
I think your implication is that the baby isn’t racist, the parents are racist for bringing up the baby in a black-free environment and are in need of being called out on the floor of the state legislature for their galling misbehavior. And I think that’s the implication the representative meant to convey as well.
I mean to convey the implication that this is thin gruel for such an accusation and is rather disgusting and rude behavior.
Probably those bug eyes…
6+years of The Boy King’s rule of transparency and openness and truth telling and uniting and togetherness and..and… and… there are more martyrs-victims-whiners-simpering babies than ever in modern America.
Sad, isn’t it? Maybe we do need another depression – to teach people what REAL hardship is. I am so sick of the whiners and criers and the “offendeds!”
JoAnne…When I’M KING for a Day, I’m damned well gonna outlaw these terms: Issue(s)…*I spell & pronounce it
Ish-Shoes*…Closure….Inappropriate…
Nobody on the tube, press, healthcare ‘bidness, or culture in general can speak plain English any more. Hell, even our baseball announcers are saying s*** like “..yes, he’s got issues with his swing..” (Baseball Dude: That’s a f***ing PROBLEM…NOT a f***ing Ish-Shoe.)