Cesar De Leon, the Brownsville city commissioner at-large, quit his job on Friday. That was expected after he called two prosecutors the n-word. But his explicit reason for now stepping down has nothing to do with that.
“I was informed of a conflict of interest between my legal practice and the city Brownsville,” he said in his resignation letter obtained by NBC News. “I have decided to continue with my profession.”
Absolutely no mention was made of leaked audio in which De Leon, a Democrat and white Hispanic man, called two black assistant district attorneys the “n-word.”
There are a couple of fucking niggers that [Cameron County District Attorney] Luis Saenz is getting, and I don’t know where he is getting them from. They are coming down to my fucking city and now they are trying to fucking put everybody in jail because they think we are a bunch of Mexicans that hit our wives, which couldn’t be further from the fucking truth, but that is how they see us.
They are fucking–and I would say this, that I would never dare use that word, but you know what: Yes, there are a couple of niggers in there that think that all of us are fucking taco eaters.
De Leon said he was sorry for the remarks.
“I want to begin by apologizing,” De Leon told The Brownsville Herald in their Sept. 21 report about the audio. “I want to apologize to the citizens of Brownsville or whoever had to listen to those tapes because there is a lot of profane language and that was a private conversation. It was never meant to be public, but it’s very important that people understand that I’m very apologetic.”
But in spite of calls for his resignation, he insisted he wouldn’t resign because over this. He once again apologized in an October 3 city commission meeting on Tuesday.
“I do not condone racism, nor do I practice it,” he said. De Leon attributed the racial slurs to him losing his temper.
[Screengrab via Brownsville, Texas]
