My grandmother had a saying she often used when someone was utterly clueless and had no self-awareness whatsoever: There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. I’m convinced she was talking about people like Mary Ann Twitty.
Who is Mary Ann Twitty? Well she just happens to be one of the Ferguson, Missouri, court officials who was fired or resigned when it came to light that they had been emailing racist jokes to each other while at work. One of the messages showed a photo of former President Ronald Reagan feeding a monkey along with this caption:
?Rare photo of Ronald Reagan babysitting Barack Obama in early 1962.?
Yet another of them carried the title “Leroy’s last child support payment,” and featured all kinds of racist stereotypes of black family life and grammar.
Aren’t those just hilarious?! Ms. Twitty cannot understand why anyone would consider her a racist, so she decided to sit down with a local TV station in an attempt to rehabilitate her already destroyed reputation as a court official and a member of the human race.
See, Twitty knows those jokes make her look like a racist, but she isn’t. No, she doesn’t have a racist bone in her body! But let’s hear directly from Twitty, who said:
?Sure, they look racist.?Even when I looked at them, I was thinking, ?God, that is racist? ? but they were jokes. I meant no harm to anyone, to anybody or whoever sent them to me ? I don’t even know ? and who I sent them out, the police officers, you know. They went out to more than two people, I’m sure of it. No, I didn’t send them out because I’m racist, because I’m not.?
Certainly not! Don’t we all forward racist jokes around our office to keep morale up and the mood light? Doesn’t everyone do that?
No, we don’t, because that is racist as hell!
The unrepentant court clerk then went on to say she merely shared the jokes because, hey, they were funny! Or as she so eloquently puts it:
?Humor-wise, yes ? not because it was racist or biased, no ? just funny joke-wise. I feel bad because that’s not ? I don’t want people to look at me and say, ?She sent those racist jokes out because she’s racist or biased.? I am not.?
Then Twitty pulled the old “Some of my best friends are black” defense out of her tattered bag of excuses, claiming she hired two African-American employees for her department:
?They were more qualified for the job that the four white girls. I just want to run my court, and I ran it good.?
Finally, Ms. Twitty decided to compare her plight to that of someone who is sexually assaulted:
?It took me awhile to get over the feeling of being raped and being thrown under that bus. I’m human, I meant nothing bad by it.?They ruined my life for the sake of what was going on in Ferguson. I think it’s sickening.?
Oh it’s sickening all right. I feel nauseous just listening to this woman. She is blind as a bat and refuses to see.
