Under no circumstance will this ever be acceptable

Under no circumstance will this ever be acceptable

The Oklahoma Federation of Republican Women apologized on Wednesday after they posted an image of a black man being lynched on their official Facebook page. The image included a solitary African American man hanging by a noose from a tree, with the text “The KKK was formed by the Democrats to keep control over black Americans. The Democrats of today just traded ropes for welfare” accompanying the image. After KFOR, a local news station, contacted the organization’s president, Pam Pollard, about the image, Pollard deleted the post. She later released a statement saying that she “did not make the post or approve the post and when it was brought to my attention I immediately deleted it.”

Unfortunately, this is real Can you imagine the thinking that went into this?

Who designed this ad?

Who conceived it?

Who approved it?

Who paid for it?

The notion that anyone thinks it is acceptable to use an image of a lynched black man hanging from a tree to make a point about politics is sick. And to compare lynching to welfare is about as ignorant as it gets.

The fact of the matter here is that because people do not value black bodies, dead or alive, using this image in a political ad made sense to them. This is not simply a technical or design error, but reveals a deeper pathology in how lynching and black pain/misery are seen by others.

