State Sen. Marty Knollenberg is in damage-control mode over a statement he regrets.
The 52-year-old Allstate agent backpedaled on a Lansing-based radio program, Lori Higgins reports for the Detroit Free Press:
Knollenberg, R-Troy, apologized today for comments he made at a legislative committee meeting in which he referred to not being able to make African-American children white.
Speaking on "Michigan's Big Show," which isn't heard in the Detroit area, Knollenberg apologized for "a clunky choice of words."
He said that if people reviewed the entire meeting, it would have been clear what he meant. "At the time I could have articulated it clearer."
Sen. Marty Knollenberg regrets "a clunky choice of words."
Higgins describes what sparked criticism from the Michigan Federation of Teachers, that union's national president, bloggers and many dozens of social media users:
Knollenberg made the controversial comments Thursday after Natasha Baker, the state school reform officer, gave a presentation to the Senate Education Committee in which she talked about the characteristics of priority schools — so called because they are among the worst-performing schools in the state. . . .
nollenberg and others responded to the presentation afterwards. Referring to the makeup of the schools, Knollenberg said:
"And you mentioned why these schools fail and you mentioned the economically disadvantaged and the non-white population are contributors to that. And we can’t fix that. We can’t make an African American white. It is what it is. So we can’t fix that. But we have this situation and we find our schools serving these children faced with those factors. And there should be no failing schools."
It was the sentence about not being able to make African-American children white that sparked outrage.
One critic, state teachers' union head David Hecker, posted Friday: "It was as racist a comment as anyone could make."
The suburban legislator broke his silence on the controversy in comments to radio host Michael Patrick Shields, whose three-hour weekday morning program airs in Lansing, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Traverse City and six other stations.
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