SARAH WILLIAMS

STAFF WRITER

Remarks made by Councillor Bill Roberts during the April 11 Prince Edward County Council meeting have drawn the ire of an anti-racism group.

Specifically, Roberts compared the issue of hiring a Pounds Keeper-an issue he described as having many loose ends-to Don King’s hair.

King is an American boxing promoter known equally for his success in organizing major title fights in the 20th century as well as his hair style which King himself referred in a 2013 Grantland.com interview to as “God’s aura.” In the same interview, King explained his hair rises and falls based on the level of success he is having in his life and that his trademark coif suddenly appeared one night shortly after King had completed a penitentiary sentence for stomping an employee to death in 1967.

“When this feral saga began it struck me to have more loose ends than a Don King haircut,” Roberts said during the meeting.

Condemnation regarding the comment came from All Welcome Here (AWH), a local organization that focuses on anti-racism.

“His statement is unequivocally racist and entirely unacceptable…Alluding to Black bodies as wild, unkempt, and feral calls on racist stereotypes of Black folks as inferior beings who need to be managed and controlled,” stated AWH. “To be clear, Don King’s hair is not ‘loose ends’, it is a natural Black man’s hair that he himself called ‘God’s aura.’”

In response, Roberts stated he regrets any misunderstanding surrounding his remarks.

“If my remarks were misconstrued or misunderstood, I regret that.”

Roberts noted Don King is always alluding to his own hair as being “whacky and electrified”.

“Don King has constantly referred to his whacky and electrified hair. He is quoted as saying, ‘My hair is God’s aura. One night I went to lie down next to my wife and my hair started popping and uncurling all on its own — ping, ping, ping, ping! It was like a volcanic eruption, at the barbershop the guy put scissors to my hair and electric shocks started’ ,” Roberts noted

Roberts further refutes he compared Don King’s hair to feral cattle but, instead, was drawing a comparison between the loose ends of the pounds keeper issue and that of the iconic figure’s hair.

“As for me comparing Don’s head to feral cattle  absolutely never happened. I was clearly referencing the complex number of loose ends that a particular public safety issue presented. It was a clear metaphor comparing the loose ends of an issue with iconic pop-culture hair loose ends,” said Roberts. “Indeed, my only reference was to a famous and flamboyant boxing promoter who made a very public and personal trademark of his wild hair with lots of loose ends… a thing he revelled in then and still revels in at the age of 91.”

At the municipal level, Mayor Steve Ferguson said there was, in his view, a failure to uphold the municipality’s anti-racism policy as in the situation involving the comments from Roberts.

“There was clearly a failure to uphold the policy at the April 11 meeting and for that I want to apologize, and I believe I probably speak for all members of council and for the fact that this apology has taken this long to be made,” Ferguson said.  “Moments like this enable us to pause and reflect on where we are now and what more we need to do to ensure we are acting in the spirit and word of the policy.  We will revisit the policy to ensure situations such as that as a couple of weeks ago do not occur again.”

-With files from Jason Parks