An Alabama city councilman facing calls to resign after using the N-word is refusing to do so and is trying to shift blame to the city’s black mayor as he considers running for mayor himself.
John ‘Tommy’ Bryant, a white Tarrant City Council member referred to a black colleague on the council as a “house n****” during a meeting on Monday.
“Do we have a house n***** in here? Do we? Do we? Will she please stand up,” Bryant said during the council meeting, while gesturing to black councilwoman Veronica Freeman.
Bryant told WVTM 13 that he was just repeating what Mayor Wayman Newton had called Freeman, in executive session.
“[The mayor] doesn’t need to use that term in front of everybody, and I thought the city ought to know the terminology the mayor uses, and I didn’t want him to get away with it,” Bryant said.
“We need to stop the racial slurs that the mayor makes, and he’s always picking on Veronica Freeman. The city needs to know what kind of mayor and what kind of vocabulary he has,” he added.
Newton denies the claim and said, “The video speaks for itself.”
The Alabama NAACP and the state Democratic Party have called for Bryant to resign. The Alabama Democratic party called him a racist who is unfit to serve.
Asked if he’s a racist Bryant said, “It’s according to what your definition of the word racist is. What a lot of the public’s definition is, I might be a racist. But according to what the true definition of a racist is, absolutely not.”
When he was asked if he will resign Bryant told CBS42 , “Absolutely not. I may even consider running for mayor next time.”