Mumpower’s No Kevin Costner

Carl probably won’t be getting an invitation to Kituah anytime soon:

AC-T: “Congressional candidate Carl Mumpower, a fierce critic of illegal immigration, on Monday leaped into a different minefield on the border of politics and race.

The Republican Asheville city councilman criticized the status of American Indian tribes as sovereign nations, singling out the “segregation” of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians within the district he wants to represent.

“We have, realistically, a subsidized country within a country, and it’s time to help these folks become a part of America as a whole instead of an isolated special interest,” said Mumpower, who is seeking the Republican nomination to run against freshman U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville.

Mumpower issued a news release titled “Cherokee Tribal Status Has Become a Corrupted Special Interest,” tying his comments to a Citizen-Times report that showed the Eastern Band failed to report at least $58,000 in contributions to state candidates since 2005.”

At the Yahoo! Politics Group, Dr. Mumpower had this to say regarding the Cherokee and, one assumes, any Native American tribe that chooses to be “segregated”, “victims”, “entitled”, or “hostile-dependent”.

1) Segregation harms the segregated – witness the motive, mission, and method of the Civil Rights movement of the sixties dedicated to righting this historical wrong.

2) Those that encourage others to be permanent victims are exercising a particularly harmful form of racism.

3) The entitlements and special status afforded to the Cherokee in Western North Carolina by the federal government have created a destructive hostile-dependency relationship between these Americans and the governmental entity responsible for the original harms to the tribe. People, especially people of strong heritage, make poor pets.

4) It is not possible to get to good places through bad means – it is my sense that government entitlements that foster dependency; cultural dedication to permanent victim status; segregation policies; and gambling revenue are bad means.

To be clear. If Carl Mumpower’s great, great granddaddy kills your family and takes your land, signs false treaties with you, and nearly exterminates your entire race, and you’re still wanting amends and exceptions hundreds of years later, then you are a permanent victim and it’s your own fault. If you live on a reservation, you are a victim and perpetrator of modern day racism. If you have a casino to support your tribe, then you’re living wrong. If you are upset that the U.S. government is untrustworthy while continuing to demand what you’ve been promised, then you’re exhibiting “hostile-dependency”.

Carl is throwing away the Cherokee Republican vote here at the outset. I don’t know how many Cherokees are registered Republican, but I’m guessing they’re Armor or Campbell voters now.