MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - The Republican leader in the Vermont House is criticizing a fellow GOP lawmaker over comments widely seen as racially insensitive.
Rep. Don Turner, the House minority leader, said Friday he was disturbed by remarks made Thursday by Rep. Douglas Gage of Rutland during debate on a bill requiring statewide training of police against racial profiling.
“I’m troubled by comments like that from anybody,” Turner said. “It’s concerning that anyone would make comments like that.”
During Thursday’s debate, Gage quoted someone he said was an African-American neighbor in Rutland as disparaging other blacks moving into the Rutland area and dealing drugs.
Gage said his neighbor complained that there were people “of color” in the Rutland area that he wished would go back home.
“He was upset with them. He said many of them were drug dealers. This is his words, not mine,” Gage said. “He said they’re couch surfers. They lived with, he used the term, ’white girls.’”
Gage said the man told him many of the people he was disparaging were drug dealers and were giving him - the neighbor - a bad reputation.
“This was his complaint to me,” Gage said.
Gage also said he had gotten to know and become friendly with many African-Americans in his work as a volunteer teacher at the prison in Rutland.
Several other House members - and some in the audience Thursday - said the comments displayed racial bias.
In an interview Friday evening, Turner told The Associated Press, “I know Doug and I’m sure his comments weren’t meant to be hurtful or harm anyone, but you have to be sensitive in what you say.”
During his comments, and in a later interview with the AP, Gage stressed the words were not his own, and that he was describing what his neighbor had told him.
Turner made clear he still believes Gage’s comments were unwise.
“I wouldn’t want to take that message and try to convey it to a third party,” he said.
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