Washington Post: “A local road commission meeting in northern Michigan on Monday started with one commissioner asking another why he wasn’t wearing a mask amid the coronavirus pandemic. The unmasked official responded with a racist slur and an angry rant against the Black Lives Matter movement. ‘Well, this whole thing is because of them n—–s in Detroit,’ Tom Eckerle, who was elected to his position on the Leelanau County Road Commission in 2018, told his colleague at the start of the public meeting.”
“The commission chairman, Bob Joyce, immediately rebuked his colleague, but Eckerle, who is White, continued his diatribe. ‘I can say anything I want,’ Eckerle said at the meeting, which the public could listen to via a dial-in number, the Leelanau Enterprise first reported. ‘Black Lives Matter has everything to do with taking the country away from us.’ The racist remark spurred widespread condemnation of Eckerle, who is Republican, and calls to resign from party officials. Despite the backlash, Eckerle doubled down on his comments on Thursday, defending his position and using the slur repeatedly in an interview with the local public radio station. ‘I don’t regret calling it an n—-r,’ Eckerle told Interlochen Public Radio. ‘A n—-r is a n—-r is a n—-r. That’s not a person whatsoever.'”