Marion Barry: Let’s get rid of the Asian businesses, have African Americans take their place

Ninety-four percent of Ward 8’s population in Washington, D.C. is non-Hispanic black and 0.5 percent is Asian. Does former mayor Marion Barry – the councilman representing the ward – have an issue with Asians running businesses in his district?

It would seem so.

httpv://youtu.be/yL7Yt612rCo

Scroll for update.

Note how respectful U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce President Susan Allen is after she was told about the remarks. At what point is it OK to diss a guy like Barry? She stated

“I was very surprised that this came out of his mouth,” she said. “Marion Barry has been a leader, he has been a mayor and he had worked on putting people together. We should utilize people like Marion Barry to put people together so that the Asian-Americans who have made the decision to move into place like Ward 8, which need businesses to service them and provide them with the services and product they want and create jobs.

Keep dreaming. Politicians who promise the world to residents of Ward 8 and demand someone fix it have had terrible results. Unemployment rate in 1980? 10 percent. 1990? 13 percent. 2000? 22 percent. 2005 – 2009? 17 percent. Those in southeast D.C. deserve the leadership they get.

He made the comments after winning the primary on Tuesday night. From Fox News.

“We’ve got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses — those dirty shops,” Barry said Tuesday night, after winning the Democratic primary for the city’s Ward 8 seat and effectively securing a third council term.

Barry went on to say: “They ought to go. I’ll just say that right now, you know. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.”

OK, all of that said, I’m going to take a guess at what Barry meant when he referred to “dirty shops.” Question: Is there a high number of adult stores – owned by Asians – in his ward? I was able to find a couple of references online to Barry cleaning up areas of Washington, D.C. that had “a lot” of sex shops. I found one reference to Barry cleaning up an area of 14th Street SE that included a wide variety of adult options.

That said, the former crack-smoking, bitch-set-me-up, prostitute-hiring Mayor Marion Barry does seem to be a strange stalwart for that particular cause.

Either way, Barry seems to have the ultimate goal of removing some businesses and their owners with African American-owned businesses and owners … and this is what passes for leadership in the poorest area of our nations capital. Oh, joy.

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin’s Twitchy site, but I have an issue with her headline. Barry mentioned “dirty shops” not dirty Asians. I guess if an Asian runs a dirty shop, that Asian might be dirty too … but it’s a bad headline that does not help much.

Update: It has nothing to do with adult establishments. My emphasis in bold.

On Thursday afternoon, Barry’s Twitter account began tweeting out pictures of Asian restaurant establishments, insisting that his comments were “taken out of context” and that he was not trying to insult the Asian community.

So are all of the African-American owned establishments much better looking in southeast Washington? Are they kept much better? Do they get better health department grades? Next, we’re going to see the Asian community start Tweeting photos of dumps owned by African-Americans, and trust me, there will be plenty of them in Ward 8.

Again, it’s the Democrat that breaks things down by race. All he had to do was completely eliminate any reference to race in his statements and he would have been fine, and everyone would have agreed with him. But since he’s been trained for years to look at things broken down by race, this is the crap you get.

Posted in ,

Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

26 Comments

  1. RoBrDona on April 5, 2012 at 12:36 pm

    HBO is making a movie about him starring Eddie Murphy by … you guessed it Spike Lee.? Only in America can a painfully obvious insipid racist, drug addict, convicted felon and perjurer be honored with his own biography.?



    • ricbee on April 5, 2012 at 8:24 pm

      I thought Spike was in the pokey?



  2. Plainvillian on April 5, 2012 at 1:28 pm

    Washington DC – Designated Cesspool



  3. Tim-in-Alabama on April 5, 2012 at 2:47 pm

    I agree with Barry. African-Americans should operate these dirty shops.?



    • johnboy111 on April 5, 2012 at 7:25 pm

      oh can’t we all get along????oh wait my intrest group is…….not getting something??



  4. Dr Underhill on April 5, 2012 at 5:08 pm

    Obama is unwittingly bringing black racism and separatism out in the open.? That’s a good thing because it?discredits??the old trope that blacks’ situation today is due to?a ?de facto Jim Crow society. I know I’ve run out of good will because it’s been demanded not earned…which is not to say it’s been replaced by?ill will, it’s been replaced by a sense of futility.?

    Somewhere along the way,?alienation from American culture replaced the?effort to join in? the American experiment, so that today blacks and whites only meet at the margins.? Usually, we’re polite to each other, but not always.? They seem to regard me the way Berry regards Asians.?



    • Murphy on April 9, 2012 at 8:55 am

      Me thinks you must be a bit confused if you think it’s “unwittingly”. His main campaign theme has been built on racism.



  5. Political Entropy on April 5, 2012 at 5:53 pm

    This is incredibly offensive.



  6. ricbee on April 5, 2012 at 7:32 pm

    I love words of wisdom from Crackpots(literally). As I often point out the only real racists left are black.



  7. JBS on April 5, 2012 at 8:09 pm

    I love it when Liberals let y0u know just what they are thinking.



  8. Dimsdale on April 5, 2012 at 10:45 pm

    What is stopping blacks from “coming in, opening up businesses” and competing with the Asians??? Is Barry suggesting that the only way blacks can be competitive is through driving out the Asians and taking over their businesses?
    ?
    What has the “Great Society” wrought?



    • JBS on April 6, 2012 at 9:15 am

      Interesting questions, Dims. Why would anyone live in D.C.? Undoubtedly, there are good people who live and work there. Some people live there for convenience, easy access to drugs, illicit entertainment, and prey. The Great Society and the War on Drugs has wrought exactly what D.C. is today. There are places there that the police will not enter without overwhelming force. D.C. has its problems like any large city, only its problems are magnified.
      Marion Barry only typifies those problems.
      I suspect most honest Black people don’t want the hassle of running neighborhood businesses. They know what conditions are. I am unsure why Asians, as a group, would want to run inner-city businesses unless there was a potential for profit and advancement.



  9. SeeingRed on April 6, 2012 at 9:10 am

    It’s just lucky that the Left is so tolerant.



  10. Lynn on April 6, 2012 at 2:12 pm

    I am always amazed at the work ethic of Asian people. They are .5 % of the population and they own enough shops to be a “threat” to African Americans. The ward has 17% unemployment. Seriously, I think if I was an African American, I would be asking why I couldn’t succeed in owning a shop. What makes me different from the shop owners and then do something about it.



  11. cherwin on April 6, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    First of all it is just another example of one race being able to say whatever they want against other races but they are protected and even if you don’t like their ideas your a racist. Sick of it.?Second the reason nothing ever gets better for African Americans is because they keep electing these cheap, lying, arrogant, bigoted, chip on your shoulder, idiots to run their cities and towns.
    Wakeup –?people in D.C. inner city~~~this idiot does not give one piece of dog droppings for you. He wants the money he makes and the name he makes for himself. He will leave you all in the ditch to starve and as you shoot each other he will step over the bodies to get to?his house on the hill. ??



  12. winnie on April 7, 2012 at 4:39 am

    Sounds like Marion Barry has the same mindset toward Asians as Adolph Hitler did back in the 1930s toward Jewish people.?? Where does he suggest the Asians be moved out *to*?

    He’s a racist.? Plain & simple. In context or out of context, the comment he made was pretty telling of what he thinks of Asians.? Susan Allen was the picture of composure and tact…and she seemed pretty clean to me.?? I’m thinking it’s time for Barry to get out of politics…he’s kinda like the embarrassing, drunk uncle you’re afraid to bring anywhere for fear of what he’ll say.



    • stinkfoot on April 7, 2012 at 7:21 am

      I have no choice but agree here.? If people in general showed a collective ability to see such racism for what it really is I’d be presenting a counterpoint that Mr. Barry should in fact stay in politics and let his racist colors show for all to see but the frightening sense that such rhetoric would actually resound with a significant portion of the population has me agreeing that Marion Barry and his ilk should bow out of politics.? I have to wonder the true purpose of furnishing a platform for such elements when there seems at times a systematic denial of free speech for the advocacy of responsible government that operates within its means except where such aims can be characterized as heartless deprivation of the needy from relief that only intrusive, expanding government can furnish.? The newsworthiness of such an item strikes me as questionable at best unless the objective is to ensure that we remain divided against ourselves.
      ?
      ?



  13. Dimsdale on April 7, 2012 at 9:20 am

    I am just waiting for “someone” to tell us that Barry’s remarks are “hateful race baiting” etc., but he seems strangely silent in this case…



  14. sammy22 on April 7, 2012 at 11:35 am

    Marion Barry’s remarks are racists and disgraceful. I don’t believe that neither he nor the residents of? Ward 8 in D.C. are reading this blog.



    • Lynn on April 7, 2012 at 4:17 pm

      Thanks for your comment, I thought WE might have finally reached you.? But your double negative comment got me confused. I can’t tell if it’s snarky or? a true statement. It’s better than a cryptogram, which I can solve in 7 min. straight.



    • Dimsdale on April 8, 2012 at 3:21 pm

      Just for the record, sammy: you weren’t the “he” I was referring to.? Penny for your thoughts anyway!



    • Steve M on April 12, 2012 at 9:52 am

      Looking back, I can confirm that plenty of people from Washington D.C. IP addresses visited this blog between April 5 and April 9. Can’t tell exact location, but I can tell traffic from the District is much higher than normal during that period.



    • Lynn on April 13, 2012 at 12:10 pm

      That is so creepy. But it doesn’t surprise me, they see threats everywhere. Or could it be GOP picking up on our brilliant ideas?
      ?
      ?



  15. gillie28 on April 13, 2012 at 6:49 am

    Ironically, the last four years have set back race-relations beyond belief.



Marion Berry

The website's content and articles were migrated to a new framework in October 2023. You may see [shortcodes in brackets] that do not make any sense. Please ignore that stuff. We may fix it at some point, but we do not have the time now.

You'll also note comments migrated over may have misplaced question marks and missing spaces. All comments were migrated, but trackbacks may not show.

The site is not broken.