Let's get this out of the way....

Come on, that isn't racist. It's actually quite funny! The people getting upset about this are wound too tight.

They should have "meet a Jihadist booth" in my home town. That would liven things up a lot.

So do they serve Watermelon and fried chicken at the event too?

How about grape kool-aid.

/Diabetic Ketoacidosis, here we come!

Ahem..trolling for flamebait...

"I think it's degrading. It's a little bit low class," Naasko said. He added that he wouldn't set up a booth saying for people to meet someone in a wheelchair, like him.

So, the implication here is that good ol' Naasko equates being black with being handicapped?

This isn't as far fetched as you might think. My family lives in central PA, aka Pennsyltucky, and my grandfather was in charge of the federal projects in town back in the 70s. Once, Washington DC sent a man to investigate why there was a 100% white federal employment rate. My grandfather met the gentleman and pulled out the US Census. Town size 10,000. Number of white people? 9950. Number of all minorities? 50. 50 out of 10,000. Half of them were Asian and in the medical fields for the most part. The rest were Hispanic and Black migrant farm workers. An exemption was granted for EEOC hiring practices. It exists to this day. The town has achieved over 1% minority status if it makes you feel better.

Naasko needs to learn to take a joke.

When I was in college, I found myself, one Spring Break, in a very, very small town in Kentucky. I was there because an individual whom I had some romantic interest in had thought it would be cool to sign up for a "Habitat for Humanity" project that was building a house for some poor moonshiners or something. My young, impressionable, somewhat stupid mind thought that spending a week with this person in the backwoods of the same place where the Hatfields and McCoys had fought it out would work to my advantage. So I bid my plans for a trip to Ocean City goodbye and strapped on my tool belt. I did manage to sell the idea for an article about the trip to a local paper, though, so I had that.

Anyway, upon arriving in this town, which we'll call Yokel for the purposes of this re-telling, two things struck me immediately. One was that the town--in fact, the entire county--was dry. Utterly dry. No bars, no six packs in the convenience store, no wine in the supermarket. No alcohol, period. This was not news I wanted to hear.

The second thing I noticed, as we made our way through town, was that everybody I saw was white. Grizzled white, an unhappy, middle-aged, down-at-the-heels white with white frown lines and white bags around the eyes and, more often than not, white hair. I had not seen such a strikingly one-sided racial representation since being fooled into attending a Young Life meeting some years before.

I interviewed my first person for the article I was writing two days after we arrived. He was Henry, one of the county's supervisors, and he picked me up from the little shack we'd been provided and drove me around in his pickup. He showed me the coal mines, the stripped mountains, the winding gravel roads and cluttered trailers. He showed me the downtown area, which consisted of two intersecting streets and a stoplight that didn't work. And, still, everywhere--only white people. Finally, I asked him if there were any racial issues in the town.

"Aw, hell," he said. "People are very tolerant here. We don't got any problems."

"None at all?" I considered another approach. "So just how many non-whites live here?"

He thought a moment. "Well, we got...let me see. There's...no, he moved. I think there's one black fella lives up North Street. Alan? Yeah, we got him."

I asked if I could meet Alan, but when we drove by the apartment he supposedly lived in, nobody was home.

It was on the way back, on the road that led out of town and back toward the interstate, that we passed a battered white car. There were four black people in it. We drove on past it for perhaps another half mile before Henry reached down and picked up his radio. He muttered something fast into it, and I caught the words "white sedan." I waited a few minutes, then asked whom he'd called.

"Sheriff," he said. I kept waiting for him to say anything else, but we drove the rest of the way home in silence.

In the end, I had a blister-filled, alcohol-free spring break and by the third night there realized that my romantic interest was actually interested in another of the attendees. I did consider that the backwoods of Kentucky would be an excellent place to hide the body of my rival, but kept my violent impulses in check. I returned home, wrote the article, drank a lot of whiskey. But I've thought about Yokel a lot since then, and if this young fellow wants to consider some other locations for his black booth, I'd be happy to show him the way there.

This is a forward-thinking, progressive thing. I expect nothing less from Oregon. Some people only have exposure to other ethnic groups through television. This is not healthy.

Best part of the entire article:

"The idea for "Meet a Black Guy" came from Sean Brown, a Linn-Benton Community College student and a co-worker of Oliver's at the Darkside Cinema."

Also:

"Sherry Littlefield of Corvallis said the booth was unnecessary. She and friend Ron Naasko said they have black friends, and would be voting for Barack Obama for president."

I'm not racist, I have many black friends!

I think that if Jeff Oliver didn't have a problem with it, what's the big deal?

/obligatory

Man, I love that Colberg macro.

Because we have no openly GLBT employees here in Huntsville, we're bringing in a transgender from another state to educate and expose Alabama employees to GLBT people. Last year we had a lesbian.

/I know it sounds awful.
//But the challenge is to dispel ignorance and improve acceptance.
///Hopefully, our closeted GLBT personnel will feel more like coming out then.

Obligatory (new window)

He looks more like a half-black guy.

The dude in the pic in the article is black?

OK, I'm looking at the pic... where's the black guy?

Good thing he was a light skinned black guy, otherwise it might have been too much of a shock to the citizens.

I always got a laugh from The Gawkers, "The Assimilated N****". NSFW? Some of the video on the Street interviews he does are funny.

Living only 50 miles from Corvallis (in Eugene/Springfield) I can say the place that spawned the flying spaghetti monster knows how to handle itself better than Eugene.

drevil877: Best part of the entire article:

"The idea for "Meet a Black Guy" came from Sean Brown, a Linn-Benton Community College student and a co-worker of Oliver's at the Darkside Cinema."

Also:

"Sherry Littlefield of Corvallis said the booth was unnecessary. She and friend Ron Naasko said they have black friends, and would be voting for Barack Obama for president."

I'm not racist, I have many black friends!

I think that if Jeff Oliver didn't have a problem with it, what's the big deal?

That pretty much sums up white liberals (and the majority of Obama voters) in a nutshell.

I don't have any black friends.

The idea for "Meet a Black Guy" came from Sean Brown, a Linn-Benton Community College student and a co-worker of Oliver's at the Darkside Cinema.

No, it came from Improv Everywhere in 2006 (new window).

How exactly does this help increase the amount of diversity? Does he think if he talks to white people then other black people are going to all of a sudden want to move there? He should be off somewhere talking to black people and telling them to move there!

I took my ex-husband, the sgt, to make a court appearance, in Corvallis last month. Totally irrelevant I know. While he was groveling before the judge I had a chance to explore the town.Fairly bland.

They should take it up a notch next year and send Ty Grizzly out there.

Pocket Ninja: When I was in college, I found myself, one Spring Break, in a very, very small town in Kentucky. I was there because an individual whom I had some romantic interest in had thought it would be cool to sign up for a "Habitat for Humanity" project that was building a house for some poor moonshiners or something. My young, impressionable, somewhat stupid mind thought that spending a week with this person in the backwoods of the same place where the Hatfields and McCoys had fought it out would work to my advantage. So I bid my plans for a trip to Ocean City goodbye and strapped on my tool belt. I did manage to sell the idea for an article about the trip to a local paper, though, so I had that.

Anyway, upon arriving in this town, which we'll call Yokel for the purposes of this re-telling, two things struck me immediately. One was that the town--in fact, the entire county--was dry. Utterly dry. No bars, no six packs in the convenience store, no wine in the supermarket. No alcohol, period. This was not news I wanted to hear.

The second thing I noticed, as we made our way through town, was that everybody I saw was white. Grizzled white, an unhappy, middle-aged, down-at-the-heels white with white frown lines and white bags around the eyes and, more often than not, white hair. I had not seen such a strikingly one-sided racial representation since being fooled into attending a Young Life meeting some years before.

I interviewed my first person for the article I was writing two days after we arrived. He was Henry, one of the county's supervisors, and he picked me up from the little shack we'd been provided and drove me around in his pickup. He showed me the coal mines, the stripped mountains, the winding gravel roads and cluttered trailers. He showed me the downtown area, which consisted of two intersecting streets and a stoplight that didn't work. And, still, everywhere--only white people. Finally, I asked him if there were any racial issues in the town.

"Aw, hell," he said. "People are very tolerant here. We don't got any problems."

"None at all?" I considered another approach. "So just how many non-whites live here?"

He thought a moment. "Well, we got...let me see. There's...no, he moved. I think there's one black fella lives up North Street. Alan? Yeah, we got him."

I asked if I could meet Alan, but when we drove by the apartment he supposedly lived in, nobody was home.

It was on the way back, on the road that led out of town and back toward the interstate, that we passed a battered white car. There were four black people in it. We drove on past it for perhaps another half mile before Henry reached down and picked up his radio. He muttered something fast into it, and I caught the words "white sedan." I waited a few minutes, then asked whom he'd called.

"Sheriff," he said. I kept waiting for him to say anything else, but we drove the rest of the way home in silence.

In the end, I had a blister-filled, alcohol-free spring break and by the third night there realized that my romantic interest was actually interested in another of the attendees. I did consider that the backwoods of Kentucky would be an excellent place to hide the body of my rival, but kept my violent impulses in check. I returned home, wrote the article, drank a lot of whiskey. But I've thought about Yokel a lot since then, and if this young fellow wants to consider some other locations for his black booth, I'd be happy to show him the way there.

"I have black friends" can be true but it still makes you sound stupid. You don't need a disclaimer.

I would if I could, but it's just that I live in Vanilla City.

I hope they spelled the sign for the booth correctly.

Corvallis?

It's a college town, is diversity really that much of an issue?

Costanza can take his boss Mr. Morgan there.

"I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who [was] screaming,'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.' [It] was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."

-Bill "Douchebag Extraordinaire" O'Reilly

That's not a black guy. That's just a guy with African ancestry.

Black guys wear pants that fall down, wear their hats sideways, and can't hold a pistol straight. They don't finish high school, don't know who their fathers are, and listen to rap music. They put all their money into cars and jewelry, use addictive drugs, and often find themselves in jail.

No sir, that man looks nothing at all like a black guy.

The_Sponge: Corvallis?

It's a college town, is diversity really that much of an issue?

Yes, most black people there are there because they are student, professors, or children of professors.

Where I went to college, Nigerians and other Africans outnumbered African Americans, and it was still a HUGE minority of students.

Clever.

Like the "I am an English Teacher in Japan" series. Heh. Gaigin Smash!

Action Replay Nick: So, the implication here is that good ol' Naasko equates being black with being handicapped?

Dammit, I had it all typed out and everything.

citizen905: That's not a black guy. That's just a guy with African ancestry.

Black guys wear pants that fall down, wear their hats sideways, and can't hold a pistol straight. They don't finish high school, don't know who their fathers are, and listen to rap music. They put all their money into cars and jewelry, use addictive drugs, and often find themselves in jail.

No sir, that man looks nothing at all like a black guy.

He looks like massa snuck into his great grandma's cabin. He looks mysceginated (Oh Brother where art thou was a classic).

That Naasko guy doesnt have a leg to stand on with that argument.

FTA:"I guess I don't care what color people are. Either you're a jerk or you're not," Littlefield said.

Truer words were never spoken.

I was in Corvallis 2 months ago for training at the HP plant. Lovely town. Very green.

drevil877: I'm not racist, I have many black friends!

Dude, screw you. Am I supposed to make the rounds through the farking projects every Sunday to bring them breakfast and the morning paper to demonstrate I'm not racist or just WTF do you people want?

"I guess I don't care what color people are. Either you're a jerk or you're not," Littlefield said.

exactly...

The_Sponge: Corvallis?

It's a college town, is diversity really that much of an issue?

Doesn't have to be. We so do celebrate diversity here in town. We got a white college AND a black college!

I could open a "meet a white guy" booth if you want. You could see me in my natural environment. You could put in a little mini golf course, a Fresca machine, some Michael Bolton LPs, some fridge stocked with mayonaisse, may a TV set to the Disney Channel. If you toss me a cookie, I might even try to dance.

Action Replay Nick: "I think it's degrading. It's a little bit low class," Naasko said. He added that he wouldn't set up a booth saying for people to meet someone in a wheelchair, like him.

So, the implication here is that good ol' Naasko equates being black with being handicapped?

I've known some cripples, and they carry pretty big chips on their hunched shoulders.

Corvallis is the home of Oregon State. I really, really doubt the Beavers' sports teams are all white.

oryx: Good thing he was a light skinned black guy, otherwise it might have been too much of a shock to the citizens.

Or they would've lynched him.

Back in highschool I made a short story in which a neo-nazi skinhead dreamed of a rural world with no black people; they've never met one, never seen one, nothing. The guy was happy to live in a place with whites-only, until he realized he had the 'wrong eye colour' (his eyes were hazel) and those of 'superior livestock' were blue, followed by green eyes, and when the town realized this, they skinned him alive. And that's when he woke up, his left arm was semi-skinned and holding a bloodied knife in his right hand.

/Yes, the story sucked