Meet The Old White Michigan Lady Clerk Who Uses N-Word In Not At All Racist Way To Describe Black Official

Buena Vista Township sounds like some swampy patch of Florida where Jack Lemmon or Al Pacino might try to sell you real estate, but it’s not. It’s worse. Buena Vista Township is this miserable flat place near Saginaw, Michigan, aka Flint without the glitter. According to Google Maps, BVT features such landmarks as a McDonald’s and the Great Lakes Gypsum and Supply. It’s also home to terrible human being/Township Clerk Gloria Platko.

When it comes to blah people, particularly Township Supervisor Dwayne Parker, Gloria Platko just says it like she feels it . Even on tape.

[Interim Township Manager Dexter] Mitchell said he recorded the call in January without Platko’s knowledge because he didn’t want her to twist his words. About six minutes into the recording, Mitchell asks, “Would you be willing to sit down with (Parker)?”

Platko told Mitchell that Parker is “just rubbing me the wrong way.

“He is just doing whatever he can. You know what I think of Mr. Parker right now, and I know you’re not even going to like this,” Platko said in the recording. “But he’s just an arrogant (N-word). And I’m sorry to say it that way, but that’s the way I feel.”

Gloria Platko just doesn’t give a fuck if you like it. When she wants to call someone an arrogant nigger, she’s going to call that person an arrogant nigger. Like you could do before basic human decency ruined what used to be a free country.

And just so you know, when Gloria Platko calls a fellow township official who happens to be African-American an “arrogant nigger,” it’s totally not because said fellow township official happens to be an African-American. Don’t twist this into a race thing, you guys.

Platko said she was taught at a young age that there was nothing wrong with the use of the N-word and she believes people are taking her use of it the wrong way.

“Every race of people have (N-words), every culture has (N-words)," 69-year-old Platko said. “Look up the definition. I learned that way back in grade school. I learned that at St. Joe’s and Holy Rosary.

Point of clarification: Platko was not literally saying “N-words” there. Nonetheless, yr Wonkette took up her challenge and looked up the definition on dictionary.com. Here is what it said :

noun

1. Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive.

a. a black person.

b. a member of any dark-skinned people.

2. Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. a person of any race or origin regarded as contemptible, inferior, ignorant, etc.

3. a victim of prejudice similar to that suffered by blacks; a person who is economically, politically, or socially disenfranchised.

Origin:

1640–50; < French nègre < Spanish negro black

So, yes, by the standard of the “extremely disparaging and offensive” definition #2, Platko’s defense of her usage may be technically correct, even if her explanation still seems like the disingenuous excuse of a bitter old honky who just got caught calling an African-American a nigger. In any case, it’s also still “extremely disparaging and offensive.”

More importantly, the origin of the word is “black.” When someone like Gloria Platko calls a white dude or Korean lady a nigger, what she’s really saying is those people are just as awful as Gloria Platko thinks African-Americans are. Never mind that she didn’t drop an N-bomb on a white dude or Korean lady, she said it about a black guy.

But that's all academic because Platko invoked the “private phone call” rule, which means whatever she said is ipso facto not racist. Just like Martin Luther King, Jr. intended.

[ MLive ]