An Alabama city councilman is facing calls for his resignation after using the N-word, but he said he won’t resign and repeated what he heard.
Tommy Bryant, a white Tarrant city councilmen, used the racial epithet during a council meeting on Monday.
“Do we have a house N—- in here?” Bryant asked during the recorded council meeting. “Do we? Do we?”
In an interview with WVTM 13, Bryant said he repeated what Mayor Wayman Newton had called a fellow council member, Veronica Freeman, in executive session.
“[The mayor] doesn’t need to use that term in front of everybody and I thought the city ought to know the terminology the mayor uses and I didn’t want him to get away with it,” Bryant said.
Mayor Wayman Newton didn’t immediately reply to a USA TODAY request for comment.
Warning: The video below contains offensive language.
In the video, attendees gasped after hearing the remark.
“We need to stop the racial slurs that the mayor makes and he’s always picking on Veronica Freeman,” Bryant told WVTM 13. ” The city needs to know what kind of mayor and what kind of vocabulary he has.”
House Bill 3979: Texas Republicans push to expand restrictions on racism education in public schools
In a statement viewed by AL.com, Newton said, “the video speaks for itself.”
Bryant is facing calls for his resignation after using the racial slur.
“We were astonished. No one left, because we were actually very very in shock as to what he had said,” Tarrant resident Waynette Bonham told CBS 42.
Bonham said even if Bryant was repeating what he heard, he should not have used it.
“He should resign because he was way too comfortable standing up and using that word in front of a group of people of color,” Bonham told the station.
The Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl told AL.com Bryant’s behavior was unacceptable.
“Such language is completely unacceptable in any setting, and even more concerning coming from an elected official,” Wahl said in a statement.
The Alabama Democratic Party urged Bryant to resign and called him unfit to serve.
“Alabama still has a long way to go when it comes to race, but cozying up to the KKK and using the N word should make you unfit to serve,” Wade Perry, the party’s executive director, said in a statement to AL.com.
Bryant said the mayor used the slur in a derogatory way, but it was OK for him to say because he was repeating it.
When asked by reporters if he would resign, Bryant said “absolutely not.”
“I may even consider running for mayor next time,” Bryant said according to CBS 42.
‘It’s completely wrong’: White man who pushed Black neighbor in racist rant arrested after protesters show up at his home
‘Bigotry exists in our communities’: Florida man faces 30 years in prison for racist slurs against Asian American family
Follow reporter Asha Gilbert @Coastalasha. Email: [email protected].
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alabama councilman faces calls for his resignation after saying N-word