A White Florida State Senator Dropped An N-Bomb Talking To Two Black Senators...His Defense? It Was An 'A' Not An 'Er'
WaPo – Over drinks at a private club in downtown Tallahassee, State Sen. Frank Artiles referred to six white senators as “n???ers” and spewed other obscenities while complaining about the chamber’s GOP leadership, local media reported Tuesday.
Artiles apologized for the remarks in a statement Tuesday provided to the Miami Herald.
“In an exchange with a colleague of mine in the Senate, I unfortunately let my temper get the best of me,” he said. “There is no excuse for the exchange that occurred and I have apologized to my Senate colleagues and regret the incident profusely.”
Artiles reportedly fired off the slurs in a heated conversation Monday night with Democratic senators Audrey Gibson and Perry Thurston, both of whom are black. The three were talking at the members-only Governor’s Club near the state capitol when Artiles called Senate President Joe Negron, a Republican, a vulgar word for female genitalia and said he had won his position because “six n???ers” had elected him, according to the Herald.
When Gibson and Thurston recoiled at the comment, Artiles tried to defend himself by saying he meant to use a different version of the n-word, ending with “as” rather than “ers,” according to Politico. The word was acceptable, he reportedly told them, because he hailed from Hialeah, a largely Hispanic city in Miami-Dade County. At one point, Politico reported, he also called Gibson an insulting word.
Well what we have here seems like a classic mixup. Frank Artiles isn’t an n-bomb guy. He’s a soft n-bomb guy. He thought he had a hood pass because of his rough and tumble times representing the spicy Latin people of Hialeah and the black state senators were confused. They A) properly didn’t receive the formal paperwork that Artiles was able to drop soft n-bombs when talking colloquially to black people, sometimes the approvals can get caught up with the tribunal voting on such things and B) normally when in a heated conversation in Florida with two black people, there’s simply no way a white man isn’t dropping an “er” with his n-bomb. They’re two great Florida tastes that go great together, like peanut butter and jelly or bath salts and eating people’s faces. Even if Frank Artiles didn’t have bad intentions with his word choice — or if he were genuinely confused since his adversary’s name was Joe Negron — there was no way it was going to be well-received when exchanging hostile words with two black state senators from an opposing party. A circumstantial faux pas, not a racial one.
Either way, it sounds like Frank’s got some tough circumstances to dig himself out of as people call for his resignation. Almost like you shouldn’t be an elected official dropping racially charged words in the professional company you keep. Now he knows that.