Michigan county official defends slur, argues that he’s not racist

NOTE CONTENTS: This story includes references to the N-word in quotes from the county official.

— An official in a mostly white county in northern Michigan who used a racial slur prior to a public meeting to describe African Americans in Detroit repeated the word Friday in an interview with The Associated Press in which he maintained that he is not a racist.

Tom Eckerle, a member of the Leelanau County Road Commission, spent much of the interview attacking Black Lives Matter, saying a mention of the decentralized movement against racial injustice and police brutality is what set him off ahead of a Tuesday meeting.

“I’m not a racist,” Eckerle told the AP. “Black Lives Matter is racist. If I believed in Black Lives Matter, I would be racist. … Black Lives Matter has no heart. And that is as offensive to me as the N-word,” he added, then used the full racial slur.

“If I could get a few people that, when they see a Black Lives Matter sign up, to think the N-word, I have accomplished what I’m after,” he added.

Eckerle, 75, has drawn criticism and calls to resign his elected post, including from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and his fellow commission members.

“His comments are atrocious,” Whitmer spokeswoman Tiffany Brown said Friday. “The governor has been very clear — there’s no place for hate and racism in Michigan.”

Eckerle’s original comments were first reported by the Leelanau Enterprise, which said they were not officially recorded because the Tuesday meeting had not started.

According to the newspaper, a colleague asked Eckerle why he wasn’t wearing a mask. Eckerle replied, “Well this whole thing is because of them (racial slur) down in Detroit.”

Road Commission Chair Bob Joyce told Eckerle that he couldn’t say that, the newspaper reported, to which Eckerle responded: “I can say anything I want. Black Lives Matter has everything to do with taking the country away from us.”

Joyce later rebuked Eckerle a second time.

Asked by the AP whether he had used the slur, Eckerle replied, “I did say that and I will not go away from it.”

But he insisted it had “nothing to do with me wearing a mask” and “nothing to do with coronavirus.”

He said it arose during a conversation involving Whitmer “and her liberal ideas” and with keeping children out of school because of the pandemic. “They need to be back in school,” said Eckerle, a Republican.

At some point, he said, the subject of Black Lives Matter came up. “That’s what got me over the end,” he said.

He also complained about removal of Confederate statues, calls to cut police funding and “cities being held hostage.”

Eckerle, a farmer, was elected to a six-year term on the Leelanau County Road Commission in 2018. The panel oversees snow removal and other maintenance and repair work in the rural county about 270 miles northwest of Detroit. The county has about 21,700 residents, about 90% of whom are white. Blacks make up less than 1% of the population.

State Rep. Jack O’Malley, a Republican whose district includes Leelanau County, said in a Facebook post that he had spoken with Eckerle, who rejected O’Malley’s request that he resign.

“This type of racial slur is flat-out unacceptable and ignorant,” O’Malley said in a statement.

Asked by the AP whether he intended to resign, Eckerle said, “That’s my business.”

Brown said the Democratic governor could remove a road commissioner “upon submission of a proper request for removal that satisfies certain standards. The governor has not received a request at this time, but there’s a more quick and sure path: Commissioner Eckerle should resign.”

Because road commissioner is an elected position in Leelanau County, the request to Whitmer would have to come from the commission, said Chet Janek, the county administrator.

A letter posted on the commission’s Facebook page and signed by the panel’s other four members — including Joyce — demanded he step down.

“We will not tolerate any kind of racism in our meeting room or in our organization,” the letter said.

Marshall Collins Jr., 44, a Black resident of Leelanau County, said Eckerle should be removed from office “by any means necessary.”

“When people say there isn’t racism any more, the proof is in the pudding. It’s right here in front of us and we choose to ignore it,” said Collins, a member of the Northern Michigan Anti-Racism Task Force.