Do you agree with the Black folks that a Hmong person is not right for the job?

[theking]

 :

Black leaders protest hiring of Hmong city staffer for St. Paul reparations commission
On Wednesday evening, Jennifer ‘JLor’ Lor withdrew her name from consideration

For months last year and the year before, a committee assembled by the St. Paul City Council explored the concept of racial reparations. Could there be a role for local government in righting race-based historical wrongs?

Following the recommendation s of the committee, the seven-member council voted unanimously in January to take things two steps further, assembling a long-term reparations commission under their auspices, with a city staffer assigned to help dig deeper into how reparations might be structured.

On Tuesday morning, with the city’s new reparations commission still in its infancy, some leading proponents of the idea stood outside City Hall to protest an initial staffing decision — the hiring of Jennifer “JLor” Lor to lead its work as the commission’s sole dedicated staffer and policy analyst.

On Wednesday evening, city officials confirmed that Lor had declined the job offer and never officially held the post.

The problem, the critics said, is that Lor, who serves as a legislative aide to City Council Member Nelsie Yang, is Hmong. The job, they said, should go to someone who is Black, someone who can trace their family history back to the atrocity of chattel slavery, and preferably a descendant of the city’s historically Black Rondo neighborhood, which was torn up by construction of Interstate 94 in the 1960s. As a daughter of Hmong refugees, Lor’s family history has its own complexities, but they said it reflects none of the above.

“We are opposing her to be hired to represent us,” said Tyrone Terrill, president of the African American Leadership Council, in an interview. “This is a reparations process for Black people. There are numerous African American applicants — even from Rondo — who applied for the job and did not get the job. It’s an insult to us. … Be respectful.”

Terrill said commission members learned of the city council’s decision to hire Lor a week ago Thursday night.

Protest
By Monday evening news had trickled through St. Paul’s Black leadership circles. On Tuesday morning, some 15 to 20 protesters — including Ramsey County Commissioner Rena Moran and St. Paul school board Member Chauntyll Allen, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Twin Cities — stood on Kellogg Boulevard, outside City Hall, to demand that the City Council reconsider.

Moran later gave tearful remarks to the County Board, explaining her own journey as a Black woman from homelessness to elected office.

“African Americans have suffered from generations of harm and a descendent of slavery should be the face of reparations locally and nationally,” said Moran, in a written statement announcing the protest. “We are the storytellers of our lives. It’s imperative that we are the ones that create our narrative and the results.”

Calls to Council President Amy Brendmoen and Yang were not returned Tuesday. A spokesman for the mayor’s office said the mayor had no role in the hiring decision, which was a product of the council, and was just learning the details.

Reactions
Council Member Jane Prince, a leading organizer of the initial reparations committee, was out of state but issued a statement late Tuesday night, calling Lor “a smart, talented and highly capable professional” but acknowledging “the council fumbled its first reparations test by our failure to recognize the African American community’s investment in a representative process. With the commission seated and able to advise the selection process moving forward, we now have the opportunity to try to earn the community’s confidence.”

Trahern Crews, who had served on the city’s reparations committee and now serves on the commission itself, attended the gathering outside City Hall but said later he would have preferred a more subtle approach. Crews had also applied for the staffing position that went to Lor.

“She seems well meaning,” said Crews, who recently met with Black staffers from reparations commissions assembled by Los Angeles, the state of Illinois, the city of Asheville, N.C., and other communities. “I just don’t think she was qualifify...

[Believe_N_Me]

While I understand their concerns, how they're acting is the very definition of discrimination based on race.

Everyday the Left is unveiling their discriminatory mindset. Apparently to them, students should be taught only by those who look like them. Their leaders should look like them. They need a prom where the candidates only look like them, etc. etc. etc. They need safe spaces just for them.

[ProudLao]

I’m with African Americans here.

[Visualmon]

There's must be a reason why JLor back out of that position. I think she found something odd within the black community? 

[Reporter]

The name JLor conjures up Latino somehow. I don't know why that is.

But why is reparation the city's responsibility? It should be the federal's and should
be made an issue that covers all victimized  Black ancestry across the nation.
Repairing the Rondo community won't be justice for those in Little Rock, for example.
Nor for those in the southern most corner of Texas. Etc.

[JonniJacko]

Whow. I don't think it's right or wrong. One can say, the Black folks should be more open minded and give her a shot. They always complain about how Asians are always piggy backing Black folks. That they depend on Black folks to speak up for them..well, now they have an Asian willing to speak for them and fight for them and now this??? lols

on the other hand, one can say..They appointed her to do the dirty work. if not that, she was hire to be a scapegoat, really. If that's the case, I guess she caught on and decline the job.

Hopefully that Mayor in Oakland figure it out eventually. Instead she's asking for a raise..haha Like girl, you gon get black folks hating Asians even more in Oakland..they already got you to terminate the long time Police chief who is black...lols

Time for us Asians to unite and conquer the world. I mean there are more Asians than any other race in the world, yet we are view as inferior...Fol ks, it's all mind games...We can't let em make us think a certain way..they've beatened us in the mind game, now it's time to say we will not fall for it and show them all who is the superior race...lols j/k folks...well maybe not really..lols

[Cali Guy]

If a black person was vying for a position and was protested on, the race card will be thrown so swiftly.

[Reporter]

In Atlanta, Georgia, they have Nelsie Yang's photo for Jennifer Lor on this issue.

[Hung_Low]

When you have been trained and groomed to be victim all you see is yourself as victim. All they see is racism... nothing else.

I'm sorry but I'm not for these reparation crap...  How do they even determine the amount or who's paying for it? The best way to pay for it is to find who's ancestor own slaves and all those that are pushing for it. Take a certain percentage out of their paycheck/social security, etc and pay for it.

What happened when they get their funds and nothing changes for them? Do we continue giving and giving or find a new excuses to fund them more?