Despite demands, Mayor Lucas won’t remove committee chairwoman over racist remarks
A coalition of civil rights groups, outraged by racist remarks and behavior by Councilwoman Teresa Loar, demanded Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas remove her from her position as a committee chair Thursday.
But after Loar’s public apology and promise to go through implicit bias training, Lucas declined to remove her from the helm of the Transportation Infrastructure & Operations Committee.
Local chapters of the Urban League, NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Local chapters of the Urban League, NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference held a news conference Thursday before the City Council meeting to condemn Loar’s questioning of Councilwoman Melissa Robinson’s intelligence and physically mocking her in a council meeting last month. They said anything short of removing Loar’s chair position would be insufficient.
“Censure is not enough,” said Vernon Howard, president of the SCLC of Greater Kansas City. “We refuse to be complicit of a watered-down response from the mayor in this situation.”
Lucas apologized at Thursday’s City Council meeting for missing part of the interaction between Loar, who is white, and Robinson, who is Black, and not calling it out in the moment.
“To me more important than which committee you’re on is actually that if you’re still on City Council you understand that we won’t tolerate racist comments, that they understand that we won’t actually allow the type of situation where people are feeling unwelcome and uncomfortable,” Lucas said in an interview after the meeting, explaining his decision.
Robinson said she told Lucas she was disappointed with his decision.
“When we’re in a time of racial reckoning in this country, we send somebody to training? No,” Robinson said. “We need to make sure that the leaders on this council represent the values of this council, represent the values of this city.”
Loar, too, apologized during the City Council meeting without addressing the issue of race.
“I speak from my heart when I ask her for forgiveness,” Loar said. “It is important for me to learn from this and to be a better colleague in the future.”
Loar left the City Council meeting early and declined to comment as she got on an elevator at City Hall.
In the press conference earlier Thursday, Gwen Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, called on Loar to make a public apology at the City Council meeting.
“Teresa Loar’s comments and behavior are both racist and appalling, but equally appalling is the loud silence of Mayor Lucas and members of the council who witnessed Loar’s explicitly racist behavior and did nothing to hold her accountable,” Grant said.
After the City Council, meeting Grant said she would give Lucas the benefit of the doubt that perhaps he didn’t listen to the news conference.
“If he did listen to the press conference and he thinks that seven days of training and a public apology is acceptable to the Black community, then that just further demonstrates that he’s tone deaf and that he is not our leader,” Grant said.
The interaction in question occurred last month during a City Council meeting as the two members clashed over whether to outsource the city’s animal control operations to KC Pet Project. Loar sponsored the resolution.
Robinson spoke in opposition, and then Loar stood up to respond.
“That was a very nice speech someone wrote you, Miss Robinson,” Loar said. “My guess it’s labor somewhere.”
On the floor, Robinson replied that she had an MBA and didn’t need anyone to write for her. She told Loar not to question her intellect, at which point Loar made what Robinson said was a mocking physical gesture, placing her fists on her hips and shaking as though she were imitating someone angrily sniping.
In an open letter to City Council, local chapters of the Urban League, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and NAACP, three of the groups that participated in the Thursday press conference, likened Loar’s gesture to a “Sapphire caricature.”
“These racist portrayals of African American women as angry, irrational, ready to scream and fight, were usually played by obese white men in blackface to characterize Black women as grotesque, monstrous, and unfeminine,” the statement said. “When anger is weaponized against Black women it is designed to silence them. It is designed to destroy Black women’s credibility, and to insinuate Black women are hypersensitive and overreacting.”
A representative of Black Rainbow who identified herself as KJ X said as a Black woman, she often has her credentials checked in a manner similar to Robinson’s.
“It is insulting to have to work twice as hard to only get half the credit if we receive any credit,” she said.
Grant also condemned Loar Thursday for her remarks during a June City Council meeting about proposed incentives for BlueScope, a company threatening to move to Kansas. The proposed deal was criticized by Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Mark Bedell as an example of systemic racism.
In that meeting, Loar said she had been called a racist and bigot this week and criticized Bedell’s letter as a “cheap shot.” She listed a number of former Black council members she has worked with and urged colleagues to ask them if she had done anything racist.
“We do not need to allow this to divide us like this, and the race-baiting that is going on out there has got to stop,” she said. “I know it’s trendy right now, and it’s fun and it’s easy to call us a racist, but by God, I’m not going to take it. I’m 66 years old. I have never been a racist, and I will not be called that anymore.”
Grant on Thursday called Loar’s June comments a “despicable, demeaning dismissal of our current civil rights movement” and called Loar’s listing of Black people she has served with “yet another racist trope.”
“When you have to read a list of Black people you know to prove you are not a racist, in effect, you are verifying your racism,” Grant said.
Vernon Howard, president of the SCLC of Greater Kansas City, said if Loar “has some doubt or question mark about the racist nature of her own words and statements, then this is a prime example of the manifestation of racism itself.”
“It is the responsibility of the mayor of the city of Kansas City, Missouri, as a public official elected to protect the human dignity and the welfare of all citizens in this city — but not only as the highest-ranking elected official...as an African American man born of a Black woman, as an African American man supported by the Black vote of Black women, we demand that Mayor Lucas rise and take a stand and be an anti-racist,” Howard said.
Rodney Williams, representing the local NAACP chapter, said Loar’s mockery of Robinson was “not only disrespectful, but it is a blatant racist act.”
He added: “I would just like to say to Councilwoman Robinson, it’s O.K. if you are an angry Black woman because Black women in America have been through enough that they need to be angry.”
In a statement Wednesday, Loar acknowledged the interaction.
“I know (Robinson) to be a dedicated public servant who cares deeply about moving our city forward,” Loar said. “I respect her intelligence, her life experience and the strong leadership she brings to the City Council. I’ve learned in my 30 years as a public servant that we can accomplish much more for Kansas City by listening to each other, and even when we disagree, to do so with respect. In this instance, I fell short of that personal standard and I promise to do better in the future.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 3:42 PM.
