TORONTO, 6:49 a.m. EDT June 26, 2001 --
James Wallace, National Post
More than a dozen organizations representing African-Canadians plan to attend a city council meeting today to confront Mel Lastman over a recent joke he made about Africans.
"We are going to ask him to resign," said Grace-Edward Galabuzi, one of the organizers. "We are going to ask city council to take responsibility for his comments and do something about it. This is anti-black racism."
Mr. Lastman has publicly apologized for remarks made in early June -- which became public last week -- before a trip to Kenya to boost Toronto's Olympic bid.
The Mayor told a reporter, "I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me."
Many in the city's black community are having difficulty accepting Mr. Lastman's apology, Mr. Galabuzi said.
"The apology, clearly, was not heartfelt," he said. "The apology was a public relations exercise to the extent that people felt further insulted.
"We have heard this Mayor apologize previously on other issues and never has he stood there and simply repeated the word 'I'm sorry' 20 times. It was utterly absurd and contrived."
Groups backing the call for Mr. Lastman's resignation range from the Congress of Black Women to the Jamaican Canadian Association and the Canadian Association of Black Educators.
"He has demonstrated that he is not fit to be the mayor of a city this diverse," Mr. Galabuzi said. "What is my 11-year-old child supposed to think about this mayor?
"There's also the implications of that kind of speech in terms of the other people who hear it and whose anti-black sentiments are validated by these kinds of comments from the leadership."
Meanwhile, the fallout from Mr. Lastman's comments continues to spread.
In Nairobi, Kenya, the East African Standard said in an editorial that the Mayor's racial remark "betrays a palpable streak of disparagement and an ignorance of Africa and its peoples.
"Although he has apologized, Lastman could not convince anyone that the racial remarks he made about Africa and its people are not what he and other like-minded people think of Africa.
"Words once said can never be called back."
Copyright (c) 2001 National Post. All Rights Reserved.