REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION: DAY FOUR: Republican defends use of ‘uppity’

U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), who was born and raised in the South, said Thursday he’s never heard the word “uppity” used in a racially loaded fashion —- and meant nothing more than “elitist” when he applied it to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his wife.

“If anyone read more into it, no undercurrent was intended,” said Brian Robinson, a Westmoreland spokesman.

During a conversation with reporters, the two-term Coweta County congressman was discussing the speech of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin when he was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist class [of] individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said, according to The Hill, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill.

When asked to clarify, Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

The Hill immediately posted the incident online, where it zipped around the Internet, causing Westmoreland’s office phones to ring off the hook.

The incident underlines the cultural minefields that come with a presidential campaign that features the first African-American to win the nomination of a major political party.

Republicans say they’re merely trying to portray Obama as out of touch with working Americans, but some Democrats say the GOP is speaking in cultural code.

For decades in the segregated South, “uppity” was a word applied to African-Americans who tried to rise above servile positions.

A spokeswoman for the Obama campaign in Georgia declined comment. In the article published by The Hill, the national Obama campaign did not note any racial context in the Georgia congressman’s remarks.

Westmoreland, who is contemplating a 2010 run for governor, released the following statement:

“I’ve never heard that term used in a racially derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of ‘uppity’ is ‘affecting an air of inflated self-esteem —- snobbish.’ That’s what we meant by uppity when we used it in the mill village where I grew up.”