Jesse Helms "Hands" ad

Jesse Helms' infamous thirty second commercial showing a pair of white hands crumpling a job rejection letter as a narrator says:

"You needed that job, and you were the best qualified, but they had to give it to a minority, because of a racial quota. Is that really fair? Harvey Gantt says it is. Gantt supports Ted Kennedy's racial quota law that makes the color of your skin more important than your qualifications. Your vote on this issue next Tuesday. For racial quotas, Harvey Gantt. Against racial quotas, Jesse Helms."

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• jesse
• helms
• hands
• white
• racist
• gantt
• north
• carolina
• republican
• jess
• jessie

[fmafreak586]

dey took er jobs!

[Sistarovat]

@JamalDOA  Racial quotas are racist.

[zl1vette427]

Helms was a civil-rights pioneer. He fought against the elitist bigotry of liberals at the ACLU, The New York Times, and Ivy League law schools. Gant was a nice guy, but he supported quotas endorsed by racists from the Congressional Black Caucus. This is a good ad for the GOP to use against liberals later this year. Hey, if the Democrats are stupid enough to support quotas and racists like Al Sharpton, they deserve whatever hits them.

[Zooview5757]

@ncdave4life: POOR Jesse Helms; he spent $16M in '84 & Hunt spent $9.5M. Of course, Jesse's bigotry was hidden from view b/c it was not the YouTube age. Give it up.....Jesse won because (1) '72 & '84 he was lucky that the 'Pub POTUS candidate DOMINATED NC; (2) in '78, Ingram won the primary; (3) many from NC are small-scale bigots & tolerate bigoted officials (Helms, Ervin). What I find funny is many people that supported Helms think the man supported limited government......that's a riot..

[whoo689]

It's just too bad that, once again, Republicans have to dumb down these issues to make it seem so much simpler and absurd than it really is. "They're giving jobs to bad minorities instead of qualified whites!" Yeah, right... And btw, what employer EVER tells a job applicant who ACTUALLY got the job if contacted applicant was rejected? You wouldn't even KNOW if the minority got hired or not, so what basis would there be to complain?

[whoo689]

A racial quota is simply a NUMBER that must be filled, an amount. It's not a REQUIREMENT that every single qualified white applicant who's white be passed over for a black guy. But if two people are equally qualified, and one's white and the other's black, that might be reasonable grounds for using the quota. I think THAT'S what the law was intended for, not just to hand out free jobs to any ol' minority off the street who applies.

[whoo689]

Btw, did Jesse Helms and his campaign have any PROOF that a less-qualified (esp. a VERY underqualified one) minority was ever given a job when a more-qualified white guy was applying?? Any STUDIES or empirical evidence? It's just hearsay, really. ASSUMPTIONS

[whoo689]

Now, wait a minute... The racial quota law doesn't NECESSARILY mean that skin color is MORE IMPORTANT than qualifications, now does it? I'm pretty sure it said that race can be a FACTOR to help allow minorities to get their foot in the door, but I really doubt Ted Kennedy and even most liberals think just ANYONE who happens to be black should get the job just to "achieve racial fairness" even if he's way underqualified.

[whoo689]

Funny how the "best-qualified" guy just HAS to be white

Because, I mean, no MINORITY is more qualified than a white guy... right?

[whoo689]

"But they gave it to a minority" How dare THEY! Blacks should be dirt poor and work at Wal-Mart for $7.50 an hour. Lol

[ncdave4life]

When it came to race, Jesse Helms was stubbornly color-blind, and he thought everyone else should be, too. Racial bias and preferences offended him, as they offend me. There was no black or white to Jesse Helms, his door and his heart were open to everyone, regardless of race. At WRAL he led by example, with a groundbreaking racially integrated team of professionals.

Jesse Helms was a great man, and a great leader. NC and America were blessed to call him our own.

[ncdave4life]

@Zooview5757, Helms never said that. That smear (and many others) were inventions of dishonest Leftists. If there had been any record of him saying such thing, don't you think that Jim Hunt & Harvey Gantt would have used it against him in their U.S. Senate campaigns? They had among the best-financed campaigns & opposition research ops in U.S. political history, and couldn't find anything like that. They couldn't find it because Helms never said such things.