What we don't know - Do people still think like this?

Yoko Ono & John Lennon

So Lauren Bacall is good enough for the Dakota but not Banderas?

Read below and see what the Dakota Co Op board thinks of Antonio Banderas.  They called him a drug dealer!  Since when did anybody think that Antonio Banderas is a drug dealer?  Maybe the Co-Op Board of the Dakota saw Banderas as a hoodlum in Robert Rodriguez's film "Mariachi" and got the film confused with reality.

What is disturbing about the nasty words said by the Dakota Co-op Board is that a good number of Americans talk like this - and do so readily in "polite company." Only when they think they are being taped do they watch what they say.  Does this mean that there are still lots of Americans who despise African Americans and Latinos.... the answer is YES.  This is not about being paranoid.

 

Alfonse Fletcher

Dakota Co-op Board Is Accused of Bias

 The Dakota, the legendary New York apartment building, has long been famous for its celebrity residents, including Leonard Bernstein, Lauren Bacall and John Lennon.

Civil Complaint (PDF)

A suit by Alphonse Fletcher Jr., a Wall Street investor, accuses the Dakota and several of its board members of racial discrimination and defamation.

But it is also well known for having among the most restrictive co-op boards in Manhattan, having turned down would-be buyers including Billy Joel, Cher and the acting couple Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas...        

"The lawsuit’s explosive allegations include claims that board members made ethnic slurs against prospective residents, including describing one couple as part of the “Jewish mafia” and suggesting that a Hispanic applicant was interested in a first-floor apartment so that he could more easily buy drugs on the street. The applicant, who was rejected, was married to a “prominent financially well-qualified white woman,” according to the suit, and though neither is named, the timing and circumstances suggest that it was Mr. Banderas.

More on a Black Person Being Uppity

-----
Racism in Plain English
Washington Post
by Eugene Robinson
September 4, 2008
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it finally happened: A Republican congressman has come right out and called Barack Obama “uppity.”

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), often described as one of the most conservative members of Congress (which is saying something), used that racially loaded term to describe Obama in a conversation today outside the House chamber with a reporter from The Hill. As you can see in The Post’s news coverage, the reporter gave Westmoreland a chance to take it back. Bless him, he didn’t.

I love it when everybody’s cards are on the table.

A spokesman for the congressman said later that his boss didn’t realize that term has long been used to describe African Americans who don’t know their place. If so, he is the only born-and-bred Southerner alive who is so oblivious. I should note, however, that the last time Westmoreland’s staff got such a damage-control workout was in 2006, when the congressman sponsored legislation to post the Ten Commandments in the House and Senate -- and then proved unable to list them.

The notion that Obama is somehow reaching beyond his station has been a subtext of the attacks on his eloquence, his academic resume, his ambition -- qualities that are usually prized in a leader but that are somehow twisted by Obama’s opponents into negatives. It is within even Lynn Westmoreland’s limited grasp to understand that “uppity” means one thing: Who does this black guy think he is to run for president? If Republicans are going to ask that question, they shouldn’t be allowed to do it through hints and nudges. Just do like Lynn Westmoreland and put it in plain English.