GOP Candidate: "I Know What It's Like to Be a Minority. I Played in the NBA"

I thought this was a pretty funny line:

When Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Dudley addressed the Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs’ monthly “Coffee & Issues” breakfast on Sept. 24, he reprised a comment he’d made at an earlier interview with the Urban League of Portland.

“I heard him say he ‘understood what it was like to be a minority because he had played in the NBA,” recalls state Rep. Lew Frederick (D-Portland), the only African-American man in the Oregon Legislature. (Frederick’s business partner, former Portland Public Schools board member Sue Hagmeier, recalls Dudley’s comments similarly.)

(The Portland Observer reported the exchange this way: “[Dudley] was also asked by Sam Brooks, chair of OAME’s board and moderator of the forum, what Dudley had done in the past and would do as governor for minority and women-owned businesses in the state. ‘I was a minority for 16 years,’ said Dudley to laughter, referring to his time in the NBA, which is dominated by African Americans.”

Well, as you can imagine those who spend their lives obsessed with racism are having apoplexy.

“Frankly it was stunning that he would say something like that,” Frederick adds. “It shows a lack of sensitivity but also shows you do not understand at all what it’s like to be a minority and that you have a shallow understanding of what that question is being asked.”

Dudley, a 1987 graduate of Yale, played in the National Basketball Association for 16 years, including two stints with the Portland Trail Blazers. For most of his career, he was one of only a few Ivy Leaguers in the NBA and also one of the dwindling number of U.S.-born white players. But Frederick says being a numerical minority in a privileged class such as the NBA is far different from being a racial minority.

“He certainly wasn’t being denied a job or housing or health care,” says Frederick, who acknowledges he supports Dudley’s Democratic opponent, former Gov. John Kitzhaber. “He has no idea what it’s like to be denied a loan as a minority small businessman, and he’s never had problems getting an equal education. For goodness’ sake, he’s a Yale grad.”

Oh grow up. The guy made a funny comment, and one that was certainly true for his experience in the NBA, but he certainly wasn't trying to compare himself to Martin Luther King Jr. MLK would have probably gotten a good chuckle from it.