[whitenology logic] Just b/c Florida Secretary of State Wore Blackface to Degrade Katrina Victims Doesn't Necessarily Mean He Would’ve Used His Powerful Position to Miscount Black Votes
Belief that racism is only bigotry is a vital part of false programming sold to you by the vested interests for your cooperation and submission to your own oppression. [MORE] Defining racism in terms of bad attitude or bigotry leads to solving the wrong problems. [MORE] White Supremacy is a power group dynamic involving the relationship between whites and Blacks in a vast system of unequal power. It is economic discrimination by one group over and against another for the purposes of subjugation and/or maintaining the imbalance of power through cooperative control, misinformation, indoctrination, genocide and oppression. [MORE] and [MORE]
From [WashPost] Florida’s newly appointed secretary of state, once described as a “glimmer of hope” for the state’s new administration, resigned Thursday after the emergence of photos from 2005 of him in blackface, apparently mimicking victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Tallahassee Democrat news outlet reported.
The photos — obtained by the news outlet and presented to the office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday — show Michael Ertel wearing blackface with red lipstick and a New Orleans Saints bandanna. He also donned a shirt that read “Katrina Victim,” the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
Ertel, 49, confirmed to the news outlet that he was the man pictured. “There’s nothing I can say,” he said.
He submitted his resignation about 2 p.m. by email, the DeSantis’s press office told The Washington Post.
“It has been an honor to serve you and the voters of Florida,” Ertel wrote in the email. DeSantis’s office accepted Ertel’s resignation shortly after seeing the photos, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
The photos were reportedly taken at a private Halloween party two months after Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 storm to which more than 1,800 deaths have been attributed, hit New Orleans and other areas of the Gulf Coast, according to the news outlet. At the time the photos were taken, Ertel was the supervisor of elections in Seminole County. DeSantis appointed Ertel as secretary of state on Dec. 28.
DeSantis’s office said it had not seen the photos of Ertel before the news outlet showed them Thursday.
“It’s unfortunate. He’s done a lot of good work,” DeSantis said at a Thursday news conference on hurricane relief, the Tallahassee Democrat reported. DeSantis said he accepted the resignation because he didn’t “want to get mired in side controversies.”