Tampa City Council member criticized for racial comment
Amid a discussion about options for new street signs in downtown Tampa, first-term City Council member Alan Clendenin stirred laughter from some of those gathered for the public meeting at Old City Hall.
“I’m going to pull out my gay card and veto the color schemes on all of these,” he said Feb. 8.
He went to continue his comments but noticed that beside him, Gwen Henderson, Tampa’s only Black City Council member, who was also elected last year, was coughing.
“Did I kill you on that one?” said Clendenin, 64, the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the council. “You can pull out your Black card any time you want but I can’t pull out my gay card?”
At Thursday’s City Council meeting, one week after that comment, Black community leaders flocked to Old City Hall to express their disapproval of Clendenin’s remarks.
“It was very disrespectful to the Black folks in this city that work so hard to make the city of Tampa the paradise that we say it is,” East Tampa resident Norene Copeland Miller said during public comment.
“There are some serious problems in this city that need to be addressed and solved. There is no time to be making jokes of any kind,” Tom Jones, a senior pastor at Heaven Destiny Assembly of God church, read from a statement on behalf of his congregation.
“We are busy trying to find affordable housing and decent jobs,” he said, flanked by a dozen Black community leaders.
“It was no laughing matter. It was racist,” Bishop Michelle B. Patty said.
“And what was really sad: No one hit the gavel and told him he was out of order,” Patty added, addressing all of the council.
Henderson, 59, represents East Tampa, Ybor City, downtown and part of West Tampa, the only district with a majority of minority residents. She recently opened a bookstore, which she has described as a “sanctuary for banned books,” centering literature and history often pushed to the margins.
Last week, following Clendenin’s comment, she said: “Stay focused.”
Clendenin, who holds a citywide seat and is a retired air traffic controller, laughed and replied: “Back to being focused.”
Discussion of downtown signage resumed.
Henderson later told the Times in a statement that her response was her way of indicating the comment “was not funny without bringing too much attention to it.”
“Despite my belief that he was joking, the joke did not land as he intended,” she said, adding that she understands why some community members found the comment “disrespectful and offensive.”
Thursday morning, at the City Council meeting, Clendenin addressed the crowd.
“It is never my intention on any day, afternoon or night to make anyone’s life any more difficult than it already is,” he said. “We live in a very difficult world and I know that the folks in the Black community have had more hardship and have had to overcome more obstacles than any human being should have to overcome.”
“I am kind of a jokester,” he said, describing Henderson as a good friend with whom he shares a “jovial relationship.”
