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A Nevada city manager was fired after he was caught on tape making racist remarks, including a comment where he said he sought to hire "the biggest Black Aunt Jemima" as police chief, per Atlanta Black Star.
Mesquite city manager Edward "Owen" Dickie found himself embroiled in controversy last month after his secretly-recorded conversations with former police chief MaQuade Chesley and others were released.
In the recordings, Dickie said he told police union officials last year that if MaQuade, who was facing allegations of misconduct, were fired he would replace him with a "6-foot-5 Black woman chief."
“Early on, I said, ‘Guys, I’m going down to Louisiana, I’m going back to the back parishes and I’m going to find me a 6-foot-5 Black woman chief’” Dickie said.
“I told them, ‘I’d like to go down to Louisiana with the biggest Black Aunt Jemima and just flippin’ whip you guys into shape,’” he added in a second recording.
After the recordings were leaked, Dickie claimed that he was responding to suggestions he hire a Black chief amid racism allegations against the police department.
‘I was telling them. ‘Maybe it’s an African-American woman, you know, that is qualified,’” Dickie said.
In another recording, Dickie used the N-word while defending his remarks.
“I didn’t say anything like, ‘I hate n—ers,’ ‘I hate Mexicans,” the city manager said.
During an April 22 city council meeting, Dickie apologized for his comments, but attempted to write off his racism remarks as "humor."
I am sorry, those words were not right,” Dickie said. “And I do regret it.”
“I’ve worked with very many strong women of all colors, and they make excellent leaders,” he continued. “I just said things I shouldn’t say at that time, trying to bring a little humor — poor taste of humor."
“This is an attempt to smear my name and who I really am,” Dickie added.
Residents expressed outrage over the city manager's comments.
“This was not just a poor attempt at humor, this was a harmful, arrogant and dismissive remark that reduces Black women to caricatures, stereotypes and political pawns,” Dr. Theresa Woolridge-Ofori, a local dentist, said. “I live here to be an example to people who don’t know that there are Black people that are professionals that look like me, that look like my husband.”
“My greater concern is with the complicit behavior of those who stand by silently accepting, even enabling this kind of rhetoric,” Woolridge-Ofori added. “Silence in the face of racism is not neutrality, it’s complicity.”
The Mesquite City Council and mayor ultimately voted 5-1 to terminate Dickie.
“The buck stops here,” councilman Kevin Parrish said. “Being a boss, I can’t accept what he said. He will not be able to get a job in another city. Why should he be city manager here?”
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