From John Wiley Price's self-published 2001 calendar JWP: Fit at 50. Not kidding.
Speaking of responses, we spoke with Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price this afternoon. We were just kinda wondering why he got so angry with fellow commissioner Ken Mayfield yesterday, when Mayfield referred to Dallas County's ticket collections office as "a black hole." Price's explanation, which only gets awesomer, is after the jump.
Commissioner Price tells Unfair Park:
"It is typical Mayfield. The problem is in the language. While he tried to lateral to the scientific term of a black hole, our problem is that we understand language, and it's negative and racist. Judge [Thomas] Jones took real offense. We almost simultaneously picked up on what we called the idiom. Can't do that in terms of the language. He could have said 'a sinkhole,' he could have said anything, but it was typical Mayfield style. That is what we expect."When asked whether he took the term as "a racial pejorative," Price said, Yes.
"Given Mayfield, it just ... you just kind of expect him to have that kind of response. He is racist and doesn’t know it. Maybe he does know it. I haven’t quite figured out whether he knows it or not. I said it immediately: 'Why not a white hole?' And when I said, 'white hole,' Mayfield said, 'OK, then, a pink hole?' That is when Jones said he wasn’t going to sit here, he wanted an apology, they began to carry the discussion that way. I said, 'It’s a white hole and let's move it on.'"Commissioner Mayfield was unavailable for comment this afternoon. --Robert Wilonsky
