Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Sarah’s Own Words: “I Don’t Do Black Guys.”

Long before Gregory Charles Royal became a judge on America’s Hot Musician, a talent competition airing in 200 US television markets, he was a hot, young jazz trombonist. Today, he remains a great musician but, more important, is another person confirming from first-hand experience that Palin has always been racist as alleged by numerous sources in my original article on her, Alaskans Speak: Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive and Mean.

And he’s willing to be quoted by name.

Royal is incredibly talented. He received formal trombone training when he was 11 in the DC Youth Orchestra Program while simultaneously playing in Washington clubs with Roscoe Bowie's Message Band and Show. He also received principal trombone honors in the First American Festival of Youth Orchestras and, at 15, was the youngest member of the Howard University Jazz Ensemble. He toured with Al Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Slide Hampton and His World of Trombones and starred on Broadway as an on-stage musician in Five Guys Named Moe, which was nominated for two Tony awards. Along the way, Royal wrote and acted in It’s a Hardbop Life, the first play featuring an entire cast of jazz musicians, which debuted at the 2004 New York Jazz Festival.

He also performed with the Duke Ellington Orchestra for 10 years, from 1989 to 1999. In May, 1990, the orchestra was touring Alaska and played in Anchorage. While there, the 28-year old Royal and a small group of other musicians from the orchestra went into a fast food joint near the airport for a bite to eat.

“I saw a great looking young lady and, as lots of travelling musicians do, I struck up a conversation with her,” Royal recounted to me after my original piece on Palin was published. “She told me her name was Sarah.”

Royal admits he was hitting on her, a regular activity for most musicians, especially when on the road. The reason this particular conversation stuck in his mind is because she said that while she wasn’t much into jazz, she played the flute.

“This is why I remembered talking with her,” Royal states.

He told Sarah about talking about the Modern jazz Quartet as an example of not strictly jazz style music but could still be cool. “I was trying to keep the conversation going,” Royal says, “so I mentioned some of the musicians, including Percy Heath.

“She quickly let me know that Heath was her name too,” Royal recounts.

Royal claims that she mentioned going to school in Hawaii but did not say anything about being married or being pregnant. “I would remember that. Anyway, it was May 1990 and she was just a couple of months pregnant and wouldn’t have shown.”

Royal felt he was making progress with Sarah Heath and when a couple of his musician friends approached, he waved them off. “But she saw them and got weird.

“Sarah asked me if they were with me. I asked her what was up because she was obviously a little weird after seeing them,” states Royal, who has Native American blood in his ancestry, is fairly light skinned while his buddies were much darker.

"I don't mean any harm,” Royal says Sarah told him which is exactly what she meant, “but I don't do black guys."

“I said ‘I'm Black,’” Royal relates, to which Sarah replied with, “Well, you aren't really black. You’re like …"

Royal remembers her voice trailed off as if not knowing what to say next as the reality of the situation sunk in on her. “Then she got real confused and the conversation ended rather quickly and uncomfortably.

So how did this long-ago, failed pick-up come back to Royal’s mind some 18 years later?

“I followed the conventions but never connected Sarah Palin to the Sarah Heath I hit on,” he says, “because there was no physical resemblance and the last name was different. It was from watching an MSNBC story on her that I saw the photos and learned her family name.”

When the now-Sarah Palin uttered the immortal words, “So Sambo beat the bitch” to the hearty laugher of her luncheon companions during the primaries, it was merely an extension of what appears to be her lifelong views on race. When she thought Greg Royal was white, she seemed more than eager to make the beast with two backs with him; in an instant of learning he was actually black, she fumbled for words, and fled into the streets ‘lest she catch something from him.

At least we know she fits in naturally with the racist right wingnuts that infest the Republican Party, unlike her running mate who says whatever he needs to say at the moment to fit in with them. For whatever that’s worth.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sarah Palin"s Yahoo account hijacked, e-mails posted online

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1919

On the heels of media reports that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was using a private Yahoo e-mail account (gov.palin@yahoo.com) to conduct Alaska state business, hackers have broken into the account and posted evidence of the hijack on Wikileaks.

An activist group calling itself "anonymous" claimed responsibility for the compromise and released screenshots, photographs and the e-mail addresses of several people close to Palin, including her husband Todd and assistant Ivy Frye.

Wired"s Threat Level reports that McMcCorkell confirmed that she did send the e-mail to Palin.

Following the release of this story, both Sarah Palin"s better known account gov.sarah@yahoo.com and the gov.palin@yahoo.com account have been suspended or deleted as revealed by a test email sent to these addresses by Wikileaks. Although the reasons for the deletion of both accounts can not not yet be established, one interpretation is that Palin is trying to destroy her email records.

read more: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1919

Anonymous said...

this has to be a parody of leftists, or at the very least, a parody of 'investigative journalism'.

Anonymous said...

Thank God you're in Canada. Our win is their loss . . . what total nonsense.

Barry Williams.......Phoenix, Arizona said...

How is this any different than "I only date redheads" or "I only date Queen sized women"?

Anonymous said...

onLocation.......Phoenix, Arizona said...

How is this any different than "I only date redheads" or "I only date Queen sized women"?
September 25, 2008 11:09 AM
-------------------------------------
(If you cant see the difference then we are in deep doo-doo)

Barry Williams.......Phoenix, Arizona said...

and perhaps the doo-doo is even deeper if you can see a difference. So she doesn't like to date black guys that makes the idiot a racist? I don't date white women but I know white women I consider friends. Under your definition I guess that makes me a racist.

Anonymous said...

HELLO PEOPLE!!!! IT MAKES HER A RACIST BECAUSE SHE WAS FINE GETTING TO KNOW HIM AND TALK TO HIM UNTIL SHE FOUND OUT HE WAS PART BLACK...THAT'S A RACIST, IF HE SEEMED COOL ENOUGH TO TALK TO WHY HIM BEING PART BLACK MAKES HIM LESS COOL??? SHE'S LETTING WHATEVER STEREOTYPE SHE BELIEVES ABOUT US APPLY TO THIS GUY ON FACE VALUE AND THAT IS WRONG. WAKE UP EVERYBODY!

Barry Williams.......Phoenix, Arizona said...

Why are you shouting anonymous? Screaming racist for so many things so often has lessened the impact of the word and almost made it irrelevant. Who Sarah Palin dated and why she dated them, or why she didn't date them, is totally irrelevant. However, who she hires, how she would apply affirmative action laws, and a host of actions that affect someone besides herself and anonymous's sensitivites is more important in determining if Sarah is racist than her desire not to date black men. Following anonymous's logic black men who refuse to date black women are also racist.

Charley James - The Progressive Curmudgeon said...

To all who've questioned either the article or Gregory Charles Royal'd account, he and a number of Alaskans will hold a news conference at the National Press Club next week to cite additional examples of Palin's racism.