A white man in Oklahoma is responding to excessive backlash after an unearthed video from a number of years in the past revealed him in blackface. His reasoning is as outrageous as his look in blackface and a Jheri curl.
In keeping with the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, a white Oklahoma pastor from Matoaka Baptist Church in Tulsa got here beneath hearth after he was uncovered in a Fb put up displaying him in blackface. The put up exhibits Bartlesville pastor Sherman Jaquess performing an act in blackface throughout a Valentine’s Day occasion at his church in 2017.
A put up by Tulsa resident Marq Lewis revealed the pictures as he requested his followers share the put up, main it to go viral with near 4,000 shares.
“Right here’s Pastor Sherman Jaquess in Black Face. He pastors on the Matoaka Baptist Church in Ochelata Oklahoma.”
Jaquess claims he’s no bigot—however that a few of his mates are, effectively, “racial”:
“It wasn’t derogatory, wasn’t racial in any manner, and we’re not racist in any respect. I don’t have a racist bone in my physique. I’ve a whole lot of racial mates.”
Jaquess’ protection for showing in an Afro, blackface and purple, painted lips?
He claims he was honoring singing legend Ray Charles.
“We now have folks [who] are offended by a whole lot of issues, nevertheless it’s exhausting to play Ray Charles in case you don’t play a Black man; it wasn’t something. It was honoring to Ray Charles, we sang the track as finest as we may.”
Lewis, a Tulsa activist, mentioned the pastor ought to have recognized higher since everybody is aware of blackface is extraordinarily offensive.
“You’ll be able to honor anybody by not placing on blackface, and he’s ignoring the historic references and all the satirical kinds of caricatures that African People have gone by means of on this nation,” Lewis mentioned.
“For him to say that’s not racist says to me that he’s utterly out of contact with the fact of what this world and this nation has handled — it’s really a slap within the face of African People and all folks of colour.”
Jaquess can also be catching warmth for his sermons in opposition to the LGBTQIA+ group. Primarily based on his Fb feed posts, he has been important of an area Pleasure occasion that includes a drag present at Unity Sq.. He additionally tells his congregation of the risks of drag queens in a lot of his sermons that he posts on Fb.
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