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Rick Perry’s Rock Continues to Draw Scrutiny

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is calling for a House resolution condemning Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his family's lease of a hunting cabin named "N-----head."

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. circulated a resolution during Tuesday’s Democratic Caucus meeting condemning Gov. Rick Perry’s family’s use of a hunting cabin that featured the name “N-----head.” The Illinois Democrat argued that Perry should apologize for the racial slur and called on all of the Republican presidential candidates to “make strong statements of outrage.”

 

“He challenged Democratic leadership and the entire caucus to speak to this and believes that all Americans are offended by this and that it is a moral issue,” said spokesman Frank Watkins, adding that Jackson “would like to see a bipartisanship effort on the matter, not the Congressional Black Caucus alone.”

 

Jackson proposed the resolution in response to a Washington Post article published Sunday about the name of the property that Perry’s father began leasing in the early '80s. Gov. Perry’s name appeared on the lease from 1997 to 1998 when he was state agriculture commissioner and from 2004 to 2007 while he was governor. He says that once he saw the “offensive name that has no place in the modern world" in 1983 or 1984, he asked his parents to change it, but others claim it wasn’t changed until much later. Jackson’s resolution states that “some local residents still call it ‘N-----head.’”

 

"This sounds like nothing more than a political ploy by someone who doesn't have all the facts," said Perry's spokesman Mark Miner said of Jackson, the Star-Telegram reports.

 

The racial slur drew criticism from GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain, the only African-American in the party’s nominating race and the lone candidate to comment on the controversy.

 

"There isn’t a more vile, negative word than the N-word and for him to leave it there as long as he did before, I hear, they finally painted over it, is just insensitive to a lot of people in this country," he said in a Sunday interview on Fox News.

(Photo: AP Photo/Mike Carlson)

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