Having recently learned that the word ‘incompetent’ is a racial code word, we are forced to refer to Al Sharpton’s latest comments as an example of something much different…

Is it racist to refer to somebody as simply an uninformed dumba**?

Via Radio Equalizer (h/t Weasel Zippers):

“One of the reason that I think people do not understand why unemployment has gone down and in some cases black unemployment and Latino’s has remained stagnant is over the last thirty two months Dr. Hutchinson, they’ve increased jobs and found jobs unemployment has gone down in the private sector. What has not gone down is in the public sector and blacks in particular are disproportionately in the public sector.”

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“One of the reasons those jobs have gone down, or have remained down is one the Republicans are cutting a lot of the agencies, where we are the employees are government jobs, government employed and a lot of those jobs go through governors and mayors who are also have had cutbacks. So what we’ve got to do and we addressed that to the President is take on these governors and mayors as well as the private sector on why the private sector is getting all these contract and bailouts and not hiring and correcting the disproportionate amount of their employment does not touch our community and have the President and them support us in that.”

Because Sharpton’s simple mind has to work in generalizations, this sweeping insinuation can easily be disproved.
According to the Department of Labor, blacks do indeed make up a higher percentage of public sector workers at 19.3%, while whites make up 14.2% – but Hispanics come in at a much lower 10.4%.  The opposite levels are true for the private sector – Hispanics are highest at 83.7%, whites at 78.5% and blacks at 76.9%.
So if one were to look at it from Sharpton’s little eyes (a terrifying thought), Republicans can’t intentionally be raising the unemployment rate of both blacks and Hispanics.  In fact if anything, they are benefiting the Latino population.
Additionally, the folks at the Right Scoop point out why these comments should be demeaning to the African-American community:

“… the inference he’s making is that blacks don’t really stand a chance in the private sector on their own, that they need government jobs so they can get hired though a system of nepotism or something. Or else they need government coercion in the private sector through contracts and bailouts.”

On a side note, does anybody remember the time Sharpton intentionally increased the unemployment rate of white police officers in New York when he participated in a racially charged rape hoax?