Arkansas Pulls Hundreds of ‘Racist’ License Plates
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WKMG-TV (Orlando), July 24, 2008
A series of hundreds of Arkansas-issued license plates are being pulled out of circulation over letter combinations that some claim are racist.
“I couldn’t imagine putting this on my car,” motorist Alice Kunce said as she held up her “018-NGR” license plate.
{snip}
The state decided to pull the entire series of plates after being made aware of the letter combination.
“Some folks might think it OK, others find it offensive,” Roger Duren of the Office of Motor Vehicles said. “So, if anyone does, anything offensive we try not to issue.”
{snip}
Another employee and a plate vendor screen state-issued plates for offensive or derogatory statements.
Some drivers said they were not offended by the letter combination.
{snip}
(Posted on July 24, 2008)
Comments
The offended person of color said, “My fiance and I are happy here, but this is not quite the welcome I was expecting.”
Apparently she was expecting a parade in her honor.
Posted by at 8:10 PM on July 24
They’d better pull SPD and CUN before Al Sharpton calls. Also, you don’t want La Raza on your back, so pull SPC. Asians deserve sensitivity so pull CHK. Go ahead and leave WTY, though, to level historical injustices.
Posted by Jill at 8:15 PM on July 24
As appallingly idiotic, snivelingly self-righteous, and manifestly non-newsworthy as it is, this story nevertheless demonstrates two important points:
1) In the hypersensitive PC racial environment of modern America, there is absolutely no slight, real or imaginary, too trivial for blacks to complain about; and,
2) In the hypersensitive PC media environment of modern America, there is absolutely no slight, real or imaginary, too trivial for the media to consider worth devoting precious airtime to reporting.
Posted by The Incredible Shrinking White Man at 8:17 PM on July 24
I am going to guess 1= I 8= hate ,NGR well thats no real mystery.Guess what I keep seeing a BLK PWR license plate I would like to apply for a WHT PWR license plate and see what happens.
Posted by Tony Soprano. at 8:41 PM on July 24
My favorite offbeat license plate was a Virginia plate, “EAT THE”.
Virginia has “Children First” below the alphanumeric part of a license plate.
Posted by at 8:44 PM on July 24
Not even a random selection of letters can remain innocent. This is just beyond absurd.
Just another State to put on the “Do not visit” list.
Posted by Steph at 8:55 PM on July 24
“The Office of Motor Vehicles said they must consider who may see the plates on other cars on the highway and become offended, the report said.”
That’s true. We never know when some lunatic is going to be offended over items so trivial only a psychotic would be offended by it and go screaming through the streets hacking people up with a machete, just as he might if a black hole in space is mentioned.
I mean, how on earth could anyone be expected to endure such a racist society for flaunting those things? If something like those racist taunts were allowed to pass without a black going berserk, then that would encourage far worse things to occur, like naming a white cake Angel Food and a black one Devil’s Food.
I mean, how much is a nut case expected to take before he cracks?
Posted by Robert Kelly at 9:07 PM on July 24
They mention some people ‘weren’t offended’…
I wonder if they made those people out to be bigots in the larger article?
Posted by at 10:44 PM on July 24
This represents even more examples of political correctness run amok. People simply go out of their way to be offended today. The same people who will protest any slight, real or imagined, are the ones who won’t help police identify killers and rapists in their neighborhoods. It’s easy to get all irate about things that make no difference but when it comes to action of substance, all these people suddenly disappear.
Posted by JAKE at 11:07 PM on July 24
…and that gets me wondering how blacks manage to survive among Han Chinese. If you listen to Mandarin being spoken, you’ll often hear the word “niga” come up. I think it means “I mean” or something like that and they say it as often as English speakers say “you know”. Perhaps Arkansas should not allow any Mandarin speakers within its borders. They might offend somebody.
Posted by jewamongyou at 12:57 AM on July 25
I think Arizona is now investigating racist overtones in vanity plates too; it was brought to their attention that plates like 14-88 and 14 WRDS ought to be big no-no’s.
Posted by Anglokraut at 1:30 AM on July 25
My suggestion is that they replace the offending license plate with the confederate battle flag, not as a symbol of hate but what it really stands for, viz. the fight to maintain the original US constitution against Northern tyranny.
Posted by at 7:01 AM on July 25
Everything now is about symbols, not reality. Nothing is what it really is, in the mind of the left. It’s a symbol of something.
This license tag madness is a symbol of the leftist insanity that has taken over the country.
Posted by at 7:11 AM on July 25
Why should we care if some people are “offended”? No matter what you do, there will always be somebody who claims to be offended.
The DMV should not have responded to this frivolous complaint!
Posted by at 9:36 AM on July 25
Alice was wise to get rid of the plate. It would have been an excuse for her to be dragged out of her car at a stop light and beaten badly or worse, raped and then beaten to death. THe letters on the plate would have been used as exculpatory evidence and the perpetrators would have walked.
Posted by Taurus689 at 9:45 AM on July 25
“No matter what you do, there will always be somebody who claims to be offended.”
Especially if there’s a big bag of taxpayer funded money at the end of the “offened” rainbow for the “injured” party.
Posted by at 11:55 AM on July 25
Sorry but you can’t legislate away hate, racism, sexism, anti-gay sentiment or any other “ism”. Hate is a normal human emotion, and though it is not necessarily productive to nurture hateful feelings towards people “different” than ourselves in some manner, to underscore the “them vs us” to the point where we box ourselves into narrowmindedness, nevertheless hate is normal, just as love and compassion are normal, and people have to have room to have their feelings. Prohibit ethnic, racial license plates, or racial jokes, and you just push more material into the collective psychological shadow of the nation. “What is relegated to the unconscious, comes to us as fate” said Carl Jung, implying that whatever we sweep under the rug becomes a dammed up energy that has to explode out somehow, somewhere. People need space for their feelings, this is axiomatic of human nature.
Far more productive than “banning” certain political or racial views, as on license plates, would be to open up a public space for open, honest dialogue, a place where people can “let it all hang out” about what they really think and feel. The honest feelings and views of white Americans as regards racial issues have been prohibited from being expressed publicly and this prohibition cannot lead to anything good, but only to more double standards and hypocrisies. A public dialogue on race which consists only of sermons delivered by blacks to whites, or only of “laws” to “ban” certain views, is no dialogue whatsoever.
Posted by WhiteIsAColor at 12:02 PM on July 25
Again I state, nothing, absolutely nothing about black culture is desirable or of intrinsic value. Not one black nation, nor city, nor state is worthy of consideration.
The only desirable blacks are those who have “assimilated” into European culture; all else being useless and subversive to progress.
Posted by jdavis at 12:48 PM on July 25
Yesterday I was walking along Surf Street in the Lakeview section of Chicago and I saw a Michigan license with the letters BVM on it. I don’t know if this was random selection or a religious choice (Blessed Virgin Mary). However, I smiled as I recalled my Episcopalian upbringing.
I doubt that there is any combination of letters which would not have meaning to someone. This woman should have simply applied for a new plate and not made a fuss about it.
Peace,
Allan
Posted by at 1:01 PM on July 25
Someone at the DMV should have reminded Mizzz Kunce that there is no Constitutional protection against being offended, nor should there be, and that the First Amendment guarantees your right to engage in speech/writing that is bound to offend your detractors if you so desire. Oh, wait. I forgot. They rarely, if ever, hire Americans anymore…
Posted by at 1:19 PM on July 25
For sheer stoopidity, this is on a par with that Black Commissioner and Black Judge in Dallas. Claiming to be offended by the term “Black hole.”
Grow the hell up,Black America. Stop acting, thinking, behaving like little children. No, there is NOT, most certainly not hidden or covert racism everywhere you look. Sure, racism did exist, was policy before 1965. But those laws enacted pretty well forced it to die out. Too much of the ‘racism’ Blacks love to scream about are either non-incidents (like that Dallas fiasco), or are perpetrated by Blacks, or fraudulently reported by Blacks — as an attention-getting ploy.
Like that Black female in Houston’s news yesterday. Saw a bumper sticker of a figure urinating on the word, OBAMA. And started a huge argument with the driver. Calling it racist! I remember reading chamber pots and bedpans had pictures of the Kaiser during World War I — was that racism? Rember, the German Kaiser was also a White man.
Seriously, the racist or racism screams no longer MEAN ANYTHING. Other than that some Black is either trying to get attention, or using the term to draw attention away from his or her crime. Are Blacks collectively truly that lacking in intelligence that they can’t understand the harm they’re doing to themselves raising that stupid charge at the slightest pretext? Like claiming to be offended by the Confederate Flag, under which so many fine Southerners fought and died… WITH HONOR. That last word also being a term Blacks have a problem understanding. Like the astronomical term, “Black hole.”
Posted by Fed Up at 1:20 PM on July 25
Now random letters must be policed for PC compliance. This nation is becoming a loony bin.
But the problem is in the minds of people who are constantly on the watch for anything offending. Don’t some people have anything else to do with their minds/time?
Posted by Whiteplight at 1:43 PM on July 25
My buds and I tried to get one before the DMV pulled the plates. No luck. I thought it was hilarious.
John from Arkansas
To Steph…..it’s a good state with a lot of good people. But not everybody has a sence of humor. Come see us.
Posted by at 2:53 PM on July 25
The word “Racist” is now the most powerfull word in the English language.
The word can turn a person or an organization into a pariah with no evidence at all. The word can topple an industry or ruin a political campaign.
To give a word such power to inspire fear is madness. I don’t believe a word has ever had such power before, the only one’s that come close are “Heretic” or “Witch”. I think we all know just how well founded those accusations were.
If “NGR” on a license plate offends anyone that just means this country is ready to explode for no reason at all. It’s one thing to give every family a home and a welfare check but when you try to pander to every whim that’s different. Sooner or later the last straw will fall on the camels’s back and it’s all over.
My old pappy used to say that you can only back a man up so far. When he gets to a wall he can back no farther so even if he’s the world’s biggest coward it’s time to watch out. He may come at you like a wild cat so never back a man into a corner with no way out.
Posted by Daniel at 3:33 PM on July 25
You’ll always find one brainwashed “tool” in the neighborhood block who will find a cause to demonstrate their self-righteousness by finding “racism” in just about anything of value.
This is the type mentality that dictators thrive on when their indoctrinated dupes begin spying on their neighbors who commit a thought crime for which the “Alices” in wonderland may then claim an accolade by denouncing a fellow citizen.
History is filled by examples of repressive regimes who fit this template and the U.S. is now falling into the same destructive pattern that forebodes even tighter restrictions in the near future.
Posted by at 12:07 AM on July 26
Fill in the missing vowels, and you have “Niger,” a country, and a river, in Africa. I’d think (sure I would) that blacks would be pleased at the recognition of one of their roots.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 9:16 AM on July 26
The Incredible Shrinking White Man, you missed an even more important fact. It’s not just that the nonwhites complain, or that the media covers their complaints. It’s that the nonwhites then GET WHAT THEY WANT, and WHITE PEOPLE GIVE IT TO THEM.
This shows where the real power is at this point in America. Whites are still in a majority and could take it back, but right now we have ceded authority to nonwhites.
Posted by Irish at 3:19 PM on July 26
“NGR” is a racial epithet? I’m tired of hearing, “Diversity is our strength,” so I’m ready for, “Respect for paranoid delusions is our strength.”
Posted by H. Dumpty at 4:30 AM on July 28
Can we really blame ignorant black people who have been trained to expect white and black tax payers to fund their way in life???
I blame the foolish whites who feel virtuous when they steal tax dollars to give to anyone black or white who hold out their hand and cry prejudice!
Now we have a confused, mixed race fella who seeks the highest office in the land of freedom and whites wish to bestow that office upon him and sell the USA so that they might feel good.
Surely God will not allow this. But is we live under free will I hope Americans will awaken and not allow that to happen.
Posted by White Male at 5:52 PM on July 29