Ernie Chambers is a 77-year-old part-black (see below) Nebraska state senator who holds the distinction of being the state’s longest serving lawmaker.
On Jan. 30, 2015, while filibustering a bill to increase marriage license fees, Chambers said all white people are racist and lamented how his own “blood” had been “polluted” by whites because of interbreeding since the days of slavery. He said, “Oh yes, I have a great store of bitterness in me. Why do you think I’m not black? Because some white person or persons jumped a fence and polluted the blood that is in my veins to this day.”
Deena Winter reports for Nebraska Watchdog that Chambers’ comments came after three weeks of debate and calls for the resignation of State Board of Education member Pat McPherson, whose blog called Barack Obama a “half-breed” and repeatedly used derogatory, inflammatory language to describe minorities before it was shuttered in January.
Nebraska’s two largest newspapers, the governor, state senators, congressmen, the NAACP, state teachers union, Omaha City Council, Omaha School Board and state education board itself have called on McPherson to resign over the blog. He has refused, saying he didn’t write or vet the blog posts and that his blog isn’t racist.
In his filibuster, Chambers talked about how his ancestors had been enslaved and sexually abused by some of America’s “righteous” Christian founding fathers. He said the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were really about granting white men the right to do anything they wanted to — including sexually abuse black girls and women.
Recounting how blacks were promised voting rights if they served in the military, Chambers said “white people don’t keep their word.”
Nebraskans were appalled and shocked by Chambers’ comments after they were replayed on KFOR Radio’s Coby Mach Show. Some say Chambers is a racist and should resign, too.
Chambers routinely denigrates “white people” and his fellow senators as racist and is rarely challenged, but his recent diatribe finally raised the ire of a fellow filibusterer, Sen. Dave Bloomfield, R-Hoskins.
“I grow a little weary of the constant charge that we are all racist,” Bloomfield said on the floor of the Legislature. “What I see Senator Chambers doing here on a regular basis here I also feel is wrong.”
Chambers responded to Bloomfield by saying, “I make hats, and if one fits and you put it on your head, that’s on you.” He said he’s not going to stand on the floor of the Legislature and pretend things are as they should be in America.
“I simply said I was tired of hearing this body referred to as racist,” Bloomfield said.
That only riled up Chambers more, who then recounted how he’s often ignored by store clerks who serve white customers first, in an example of “white privilege.” He said, “When you’re black, it doesn’t change. If I walked around here humble, afraid to look a white man in his face, they would chew me up and spit me out.”
Nearly yelling, Chambers recounted how he used to go to schools where black children were being beaten, and later got corporal punishment banned in schools. He said society is reaping what it sowed by mistreating those children, “They don’t know anything else.”
Chambers said his legislative office receptionist often gets calls from people who say profane, racist things — to the point where he tells her not to take any messages from anyone. “And you all are so tender and sensitive, you couldn’t survive having to live like I live,” he said.
Writing for NewsMax on Feb. 5, 2015, Deena Winter recounts other outrageous things Chambers had said and done, including:
- Suing God
- Calling Christians hypocrites
- Calling the Bible “Bibbel” and biblical accounts “fairy tales.”
And although Chambers “frequently” brought Nebraska’s unicameral legislature to “a screeching halt,” Deena noted that “the half-dozen reporters who always hang around the Legislature rarely reported his most incendiary rants” and that “the mainstream press downplays or flat-out does not report the most provocative things Chambers says,” including the same newspaper that has been calling for the resignation of the (white) state education official, McPherson.
~Éowyn
