Updated as of 10/10/2022 at 4:00 p.m. ET
Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez has resigned after getting caught calling her fellow council member’s Black child a monkey, according to ABC 7 News. The remarks were caught on tape in a conversation between Martinez and two other council members.
Martinez submitted a statement following the backlash announcing her resignation.
“I take responsibility for what I said and there are no excuses for those comments. I’m so sorry. I sincerely apologize to the people I hurt with my words: to my colleagues, their families, especially to Mike, Sean, and your son. As a mother, I know better and I am sorry. I am truly ashamed. I know this is the result of my own actions. I’m sorry to your entire family for putting you through this,” she wrote this morning.
You know, the last few times we’ve seen racist remarks caught on tape, they’ve been directed to grown adults. However, Martinez directed her racist nonsense at a child in the most disturbing and stereotypical sense. In the leaked audio obtained by The Los Angeles Times, Martinez was angrily discussing her white colleague, council member Mike Bonin, and how he handled his Black son at a Martin Luther King Jr. parade.
First she’s heard attacking her colleague saying “Bonin thinks he’s f**cking Black,” and called him a “little b*itch.” Then she goes in to attack his son calling him a “changuito” which translates to “monkey.” Then, (yes, there’s more) she went on to criticize how Bonin raises his child.
“They’re raising him like a little White kid. I was like, this kid needs a beatdown. Let me take him around the corner and then I’ll bring him back,” she said in the recording.
Now…I’ve been a witness to the “they need their ass whooped” comments before directed at the one child making a scene at the supermarket or the mall. But Martinez’s choice of words weren’t commentary. They were flat out racist.
Read more about this mess from CNN:
“In a moment of intense frustration and anger, I let the situation get the best of me and I hold myself accountable for these comments. For that I am sorry,” Martinez said in a statement to CNN.
Bonin and his husband, Sean Arian, are now asking the City Council to remove Martinez as council president and say she needs to resign from office.
“We are appalled, angry and absolutely disgusted that Nury Martinez attacked our son with horrific racist slurs, and talked about her desire to physically harm him. It’s vile, abhorrent, and utterly disgraceful,” the couple said in a joint statement.
Bonin and Arian added that they are “equally angry and disgusted by the ugly racist comments about our son from Kevin de León and Ron Herrera, who should also resign their posts, and by the tacit acceptance of those remarks from Gil Cedillo.”
The California and Los Angeles branches of the NAACP called for Martinez to resign along with some of the other council members appalled by the leaked phone call.
“The President of the LA City Council, and all of the involved Councilmembers should immediately resign. This kind of overt racism has no place in political discourse. We clearly know where your heart and mind are, and both of them are corroded with the rust of racism and hate,” said Rick L. Callender, President of the CA/HI State Conference of the NAACP.
It’s unclear whether she’d be giving up her seat or being demoted from her position. Either way, she’s proven herself unworthy of city council president.