The vendor is Jonathan Alcox, who could very well be voting for Barak Obama.

Wonder if there will be a national follow up to this weak attempt to paint the GOP with a broad brush stroke?

"He said the Houston convention was the first time he had offered the pins, and he intended to see how they sold before putting them up on his Web site. He sold four pins – two of them to a reporter from The News."

"He said that he is neither Republican nor Democrat and that “there’s no agenda here.” He also runs a site offering Democratic merchandise, democratmall.com, and sells at Democratic gatherings."

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/061908dnmetpin.16051b20.html

Just to pick up further on the George Clinton/ Parliment/ Funkadelic thread, here are some relevant lyrics from "Chocolate City." Seems George thinks it'll still be the White House ...

And when they come to march on ya

Tell 'em to make sure they got their James Brown pass

And don't be surprised if Ali is in the White House

Reverend Ike, Secretary of the Treasure

Richard Pryor, Minister of Education

Stevie Wonder, Secretary of FINE arts

And Miss Aretha Franklin, the First Lady

Are you out there, CC?

A chocolate city is no dream

It's my piece of the rock and I dig you, CC

God bless Chocolate City and its (gainin' on ya!) vanilla suburbs

Can y'all get to that?

Gainin' on ya!

Gainin' on ya!

Maybe that's why my gut just gave a, Hard dee fucking har at this "clever" little button. The C.U.N.T. shirt or pin, however, I found that really offensive. Now if they come out with some N.I.G.G.E.R. or any particular-slur button, I'll get all outraged. But I doubt they'll do that, because they don't want an epidemic of white people who can't shit because they have a buttons shoved up their ass. The monkey shirt goes in that category.

Thank you Stackey, for that. I feel the same way.

Juliebird is right in saying that the pin id's the wearer's racism. I almost hope some people buy it, so I can know who to avoid. Undercover racism can drive you crazy. People keep going "that's not racist". I am loving all the people here pointedly saying that by context and intent, that sucker's racist. I fully intend to print this thread out and use it against any idiot up here who tried that gaslighting/mak you crazy game.

I'm happy to see people beginning to fight the wink-wink nudge nudge. The people arguing Obama as racist usually just hit my troll list quickly. The "black people are more racist" bull is probably what's coming next.

A friend in Oklahoma says people are walking around wearing these things.

You painted quite a picture of your old man, there. Scary. Been to OC, not surprised...

Anyway, in 1993, the cartoonist Robert Crumb brilliantly illustrated the same kind of fear that is now driving people into a froth:

(warning- the content of this link is not for the faint-hearted)

http://www.heretical.com/miscella/rcnoa.html

It's powerful, graphic (and some would say, outrageous or perhaps irresponsible) stuff, but Crumb nailed it.

No doubt that he was lampooning paranoid whites, but I don't doubt that some who saw it actually agreed with it.

After all, the astonishing popularity of "All in the Family" was due, in no small part, to those fans who tuned in every week to root for Archie Bunker.

A very old, and very sad, story.

What great strategy! Show the country that you really, really are what some of us always thought....besides minorities only make up about 1/3 of the US population. Who needs them?

In 1984, when Walter Mondale named Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, delegates at the GOP convention in Texas wore buttons that proclaimed "Fritz and Tits in `84!"

Is the "White House" button racist? I don't know, it strikes as an attempt to say "Obama's not White," but I think it kind of fizzles. Maybe because as every election goes by, more people are comfiortable with the fact thart tehre are nonwhite people in and ariound their lives. Heck, my ancestors from the Emerald Isle in the 1840s were probably considered nonwhite by some snarky nativists.

One idiot vendor in Texas doesn't represent all of Republicans. I say this as a democrat. Most people be it republican, democrat and independent are appauled at that kind of racist attitude. The Press or bloggers, sometimes mistaken as the Press, need to stop painting everyone with the same brush. Let's get to the issues and stop this kind of back and forth. Not everyone who doesn't support Obama is a racist who is going to be wearing a stupid pin like that vendor sold, they have other reasons not to support him, like the fact they are republican and he is a democrat. Let's stop this race baiting already and get to the issues and what's important.

kufir77 wrote in the very first post: "So....is the song "Paint the White House Black" racist too?"

The answer is clearly, no, whether you refer to George Clinton or Lil Wayne. Why? It is in the context, in which the songwriter is hoping for more or better representation in Washington. This is a profoundly democratic hope, one that we all have. Semocracy doesn't automatically represent well, and often does it poorly, for many reasons. The phrase is little more than a metaphor with the message that the writer/singer/rapper does not feel their interests are represented by the system. Far from revolutionary, this is actually a conservative feeling: the desire that the system function the way it is supposed to.

And yet, the button selling at the Texas GOP convention, is, unabashedly racist. It sucks, but it is true!

From my education, Context determines whether something is racist or not. Where the button is found, who created it, who sold it, who bought it, and where they bought it ALL matter when interpreting whether or not something is racist.

I believe there are situations where this wouldn't be considered racist... a previous poster mentioned this could be interpreted as a statement of pride and solidarity with a black candidate. Valid given alternate context. Somehow I doubt that is what the vendor was intending at a GOP convention, but it is a possibility.

That said, I interpret this based on the context of a button sold at a Republican convention, intented to put down the opposition candidate. This is apparently an expression against a candidate, not for a candidate. The humor is seemingly based on the opposition candidate's race. To me this smacks of very poor taste. I'd say it is appealing to purient interests. Given the context I am interpreting it in, it is Racist.

Judge the button on context, and I'd be very interested in hearing how someone will defend it. I don't believe you can defend it honestly.