DAYTONA BEACH -- The founder of the Hometown Democracy movement has apologized for using what some consider a racial epithet in an e-mail to the executive director of the Volusia Council of Governments.
Lesley Blackner, a Palm Beach attorney, said she had no idea the phrase "step & fetch it" had a negative racial connotation. Blackner used the phrase in a May 13 e-mail to VCOG's Mary Swiderski. Both Swiderski and Blackner are white.
Clarence Anthony, the black former mayor of South Bay in Palm Beach County and an Amendment 4 opponent, sent out a press release Monday demanding a public apology from Blackner after Swiderski, at Blackner's request, forwarded the e-mail with the offensive phrase to a list of contacts.
"I had no idea. I've been saying it for years," Blackner said. "If I offended him, sorry. That's about all I can do."
Swiderski said Tuesday that Blackner had accused her and her agency of favoring the opposition to Amendment 4, which would require local governments to put any change to a comprehensive plan to a voter referendum.
Proponents have praised Amendment 4 as a way to rein in out-of-control development, while opponents say it will slow the planning process and hurt an already ailing economy. Blackner founded the Hometown Democracy movement, and helped author Amendment 4, which will be on the November ballot statewide.
The Volusia Council of Governments has no official position on Amendment 4, but most of its members are opposed to it, and Swiderski said she plans to vote against it.
In February, Blackner accused Swiderski of using her position to obtain records from VCOG's member governments for the purpose of lobbying against Amendment 4. In her May 13 e-mail to Swiderski, Blackner cited a poll that showed a majority of Floridians supported Amendment 4, and asked Swiderski to forward it along her e-mail chain of local elected officials and business people.
"Please send the following to your entire list. I'll know if it happens. I'm only too aware of your step & fetch it for the Chamber of Commerce crowd opposing Amendment 4," Blackner wrote.
Swiderski obliged and forwarded the e-mail, including Blackner's introduction, to about 300 people.
Anthony received the e-mail from Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy, an anti-Amendment 4 group. He said he e-mailed Blackner privately last week, and when she didn't respond, decided to go public with his dismay over her use of the phrase.
"I just think this type of reference in this day and time is ignorant," Anthony said.
The former South Bay mayor said that he was satisfied to hear Blackner apologized when contacted Tuesday.
"Step & fetch it" refers to the black actor Lincoln Theodore Perry, who became famous in the 1930s under the stage name Stepin Fetchit for portraying characters in films that were often dumb, clumsy and lazy.
"It is a degrading term that goes back to the days when we were caricaturized as good-for-nothing, slow-talking, lazy buffoons," said Cynthia Slater, president of the Volusia County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "There is no place for those kinds of terms these days. That's a very sensitive description."
