A Ferguson court clerk fired following the Justice Department’s report on city officials’ conduct said on Tuesday that while she did send racist jokes in emails to her coworkers, she is not racist.
Mary Ann Twitty was one of three Ferguson city employees that the Justice Department alleged circulated racist emails from their work email accounts. One of the emails Twitty sent featured a photo of Ronald Reagan feeding a baby chimpanzee with the caption, “Rare photo of Ronald Reagan babysitting Barack Obama in early 1962.”
During her interview with St. Louis station KTVI, Twitty said she didn’t mean to hurt anyone by sending the emails, though she acknowledged they were racist.
“Sure, they look racist, but even when I looked at them, I’m thinking, ‘God, yes, that is racist.’ But they were jokes. I meant no harm to anyone or anybody,” she told KTVI. “I didn’t send them out because I was racist, because I’m not.”
Twitty told St. Louis station KMOV that while she realizes how bad the emails look now, at the time she found them funny.
“Not because it was racist or biased, just funny because it was just funny jokewise,” Twitty said. “I feel bad because that’s not, I don’t want people to look at me and say ‘she sent those racist jokes out because she’s racist or biased.’ And I am not.”
She said that she felt like the “sacrificial lamb” and that she singled out to be fired so that the city appeared to be addressing the DOJ report.
“They ruined my life for the sake of what was going on in Ferguson. I think it’s sickening. It just really upset me,” she told KTVI.
During her interview with KMOV, Twitty added that she’s had trouble finding work since she was fired as the Ferguson City Court Clerk.
“It took me a while to get over the feeling of being raped and being thrown under the bus,” she told KMOV.
Twitty also addressed the Justice Department report’s claim that the city unfairly targeted black residents with high fines in order to generate revenue.
“I set no fines, I just abided by them,” Twitty told KMOV.
h/t Raw Story
