Buffalo pastor demands apology for alleged racist e-mails in Lew-Port
The president of the Lewiston-Porter School Board has been forwarding racist and sexist e-mails to other board members, according to past and present colleagues on the board.
Board President Robert J. Weller regularly forwards what he considers to be humorous e-mail messages to a list of friends and fellow board members, current and former board members told The Buffalo News.
Among the e-mails:
• A photo of Barack Obama, depicted making a campaign promise to deliver jobs to “everyone who can work.” In the background of the doctored image is a group of African-Americans running away.
•A mock news release from the Detroit Police Department that claims the department will replace German shepherd police dogs with “coon dogs, due to the fact the city is not having any problems with Germans.”
• A doctored photo of Chelsea Clinton holding up a T-shirt that reads, “My mom is getting her ass kicked by a Negro.”
• A list of a dozen male chauvinist “jokes,” including an explanation that women have smaller feet to allow them “to stand closer to the kitchen sink,” and a woman’s broken watch shouldn’t be fixed because “there is a clock on the oven.”
Several newly elected, current and former board members complained to The News about the e-mails.
“It’s just not funny to be racist,” said board member-elect Wendy Swearingen. “It’s not a joke.”
Former board President Robert L. Laub, who served on the board with Weller, said he believes Weller should not be president of the School Board.
“The message is clear,” Laub said, “if you’re not white and Christian, in Bob Weller’s world, you don’t exist.”
In response to The News' report on the e-mails, the pastor of a prominent East Side Buffalo church said today he is organizing an e-mail campaign anong more than 3,000 congregants to persuade Weller to apologize or resign his post, and church members may attend the next Lewiston-Porter School Board meeting.
Weller, a Town of Porter resident, acknowledged sending the e-mails but said the messages do not mean he’s a racist. He also said he didn’t mean to offend anyone.
All the messages were sent from a personal e-mail account and on his personal computer, not a school e-mail account or school-owned equipment, Weller said.
“They can accuse all they want to,” he said, “but I didn’t do anything other than what everybody else in the world does.”
The messages fall under his freedom of speech, he said, adding that he did not author them, but merely forwarded them.
“The president of the School Board is no more holy than a minister, and a minister probably sends a lot more stuff than I do,” Weller said. “These are just jokes. If somebody wanted to take offense, they had the opportunity to shut if off, just like a radio.”
Fellow School Board member Edward M. Lilly said he is on Weller’s e-mail list and finds some messages “hysterical,” “gross” or “just not that funny.” He defended his colleague.
“I don’t see how that has anything to do with the school,” Lilly said.
Former board member James A. Mezhir, however, said there is no excuse for Weller’s actions.
“This kind of stuff obviously is inappropriate, it’s wrong, and it’s something that should be corrected,” Mezhir said.
Weller, 72, finished last in a five-way race for the board in the spring of 2007 but was appointed to a board vacancy several months later. He ran for the School Board again in 2008, earning a seat after finishing with the most votes of the four candidates.
The Lewiston-Porter schools employ 193 full-time teachers, one of whom is black and another who is Hispanic, according to figures provided by the district.
Of the district’s approximately 2,300 students, a little more than 100, or about 4.5 percent, are nonwhite.
Board member Michael J. Gentile said he wonders if the ideas expressed in the e-mails Weller forwarded have ever crept into the decision-making of the high-powered district official.
“At the educational level, tolerance and acceptance are important,” Gentile said. “And these [e-mails] call that into question.”
Lew-Port School Superintendent R. Christopher Roser said he has been made aware of the e-mails and has called for a policy that would mandate training new School Board members.
Such training has “deteriorated to nothing,” and Weller did not take any available basic training after he was elected, Roser said.
The district is working with its attorneys to draft updates to board policies that would require initial and ongoing training on things like the appropriate use of personal e-mail, Roser said.
Roser also said he has sensed a refusal from board members to attend formal training sessions.
“This is why we have to mandate [training],” he said, “to protect people from themselves sometimes. . . . “I think we need to have some basic training so people know the appropriateness of the office that they hold. “And it’s an elected office, and you are in the public. And you assume a different mantle as a result of being a public official now.”
When asked if Weller should have known better with or without training, Roser said he would not comment.
Weller, who said he thought fellow board members “could use a joke and lighten up once in a while,” also said, “at least I don’t discriminate. . . . I got a whole list of people I send to.”
Adamant that he’s done nothing wrong, Weller had a message for his critics: “Tell ’em he who’s without sin [should] cast the first stone.”
Today, the Rev. Darius Pridgen, pastor of the True Bethel Baptist Church in Buffalo, said the report on the e-mails, and Weller's lack of contrition, upset him and members of the church.
"I was very surprised that in 2009 a person would believe that racist and sexist e-mails are acceptable for a public official," said Pridgen, who is black and who represents a predominantly black congregation. "Everybody does not do it, and it's not acceptable even if they do."
Pridgen said he tried to reach Weller this morning, but wasn't able to do so.
He said he went to the Lewiston-Porter School District Web site and got the e-mail addresses of every School Board member. The addresses were then distributed to the congregation at True Bethel's three services this morning, about 3,000 people in all.
Church officials are asking members to e-mail Weller, while copying the other board members on the e-mail, with their concerns in a restrained and respectful manner, Pridgen said.
Pridgen said the congregation was asked to thank Weller for his service, to ask him to apologize for the pain he's caused and, if he doesn't, to ask him to step down from the board.
"He seems very desensitized to" the needs of the district's minority students, said Pridgen, who said he and members of his congregetion would attend the next Lew-Port School Board meeting en masse if he can't reach Weller beforehand.
News Staff Reporter Stephen T. Watson contributed to this report.
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