"As uneducated as they are on local government, they do vote and unfortunately they also breed."

These were the words spoken by Allen County Councilperson Larry L. Brown at a meeting of the Allen County Council on June 18th, 2020 in response to 18 days of Black Lives Matters protests in Downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana.

In response, his colleagues Ken Fries and Kyle Kerley laugh and the chair of the meeting rushes the meeting forward instead of responding to the obviously racist comments of Councilperson Brown.

Please watch the video here.

Fort Wayne, Indiana (largest city in Allen County, second largest city in Indiana) is a microcosm of the larger national debate about police excessive use of force, suppression of free speech, and a police department in woeful need of reform. On the same day that Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry announced modest reforms at the city level including expanding the use of body cameras, banning chokeholds, and instituting a civilian review board, we find our county council revealing the explicit and implicit racism in our very government.

Brown's apology is not enough. He does not label his statements as racist nor does he seem to recognize the impact or effects of this kind of logic. His apology does no work to recognize the imperative of being actively anti-racist.

Thus our demands:

Brown's comments are unacceptable and he must resign.

His colleagues must issue public apologies for not responding swiftly to the outrageous comment and, instead, laughing. White silence in the face of racism is at best passive agreement and at worst an act of violence itself. They should also self-educate about how to be anti-racist and provide the public with details on how they plan to actively address racist comments in the future.