Salvatore Ballarino, a political appointee to the Staten Island Community Education Council, has admitted to sending an email to dozens of people, including members of the public schools’ parent advisory board.
From The Staten Island Real Time News
The mock photo strip, sent Jan. 4 by Salvatore Ballarino, the borough president’s appointee to the volunteer board, features cartoon-like speech balloons drawn out of McCain’s mouth referencing lynching African Americans and equating African American babies with excrement.
The widely forwarded email also questions black fathers’ ability to support their families and states Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles are always smiling, because they did not know they were black. After each “punch line” the cartoon-like strip shows a photo of Obama’s face, positioned in such a way to make him look stunned and dumbstruck.
In the e-mail, Sen. John McCain is shown telling then-candidate Barack Obama that he has black people in his family tree, adding, “If I recall, they’re still hanging there.”
In another exchange, McCain asks Obama the difference between a black man and a picnic table, before offering that “a picnic table can support a family.”