School board member reads horrifically racist blog post after he's called out for threats against parents of trans kids
A Pennsylvania school board member insists he didn't realize the blog post he read aloud about Black people could be considered racist.
Mike Martin, who is white, shared an article Monday toward the end of a three-hour meeting of the Wilson School Board that claimed Black people are easily offended and averse to "correction" by others, and his fellow school officials and administrators issued a statement condemning his remarks, reported the Reading Eagle.
“I really did not think I was being racist,” Martin told the newspaper. “I apologize for how it came across. As horrible as it sounds, it wasn’t meant to be a horrible statement and I need to fix it.”
Martin read the article, which complained that Black people got unreasonably offended when asked to pull up their pants or turn down their music, among other things, when asked for additional comments after he was asked by another board member, who was also white, to apologize for threatening to beat up the parents of transgender children at a previous meeting.
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"I think sometimes we're afraid to discipline a group because of the recourse or their position or it might offend them, and I think that brings problems that I know that we've been talking about, you know, rowdiness in classrooms and discipline in classrooms because we're afraid to take that next step," he said, after finishing the piece purportedly written by a Black man. "Whatever that step may be, I think we need to start addressing those issues in a more formidable way instead of just trying to accommodate, because of certain situations or their upbringing."
Martin, who previously made news by refusing to wear a mask to a board meeting in May 2021, said he understands the outrage and apologized.
“I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feeling, if it came across that way I have to apologize,” Martin said. “I have to step to the plate. I’m really sorry that this thing blossomed into what it manifested into.”
The school board issued another statement signed by the superintendent announcing a special meeting on Monday to vote on a resolution to formally censure Martin and request his resignation, but the district has no legal authority to remove him.
Martin, who plans to issue a public apology and explanation at the meeting, said he wasn't planning to resign and hoped to meet with a Black family from the district so they could tell him what he could do to fix the situation.
"Most people that really know me know that I don’t have a racist bone in my body," he said. "I know some people think I’m a closet racist and I have to live with that."
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