May 29, 2009 04:38 PM UTC

La Raza: Tancredo "Defamed Our Organization"

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• by: Colorado Pols

From the Colorado Independent:

The National Council of La Raza doesn’t think much of former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo’s attack on the 40-year-old civil rights organization as “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.” The Littleton Republican made the claim Thursday afternoon in an interview on CNN, arguing his claim that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sottomayor “appears to be racist.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” National Council of La Raza spokesperson Lisa Navarrete told The Colorado Independent. “He’s defamed our organization and told falsehoods about our organization without any basis in fact or evidence. That’s not who we are or what we do.”

…It’s not the first time the Latino civil rights group has been inaccurately characterized by Tancredo, Navarrete said, though he hasn’t gone so far as to compare NCLR with the Ku Klux Klan before.

“He is a leading spokesperson and a leading figure in the anti-immigrant extremist movement, and as such we’re a target for anti-immigrant extremists,” Navarrete said.

The Independent goes on to note lowlights in Tancredo’s history on race relations, including his “famously [singing] ‘Dixie’ standing in front of Confederate flags in Columbia, S.C.”

A poll follows, more on Tancredo’s rantings here.

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