Brazoria mayor drops language ordinance

Remember Brazoria Mayor Ken Corley's proposal to outlaw use of the word "nigger" in his town? Turns out residents weren't too happy about it — some 200 of them met on the town's Main Street last night and blasted the idea, causing Corley to withdraw it.

In case you've forgotten, Corley, after hearing some black ministers talk on television about how offensive the word is to them, decided he would make Brazoria a model of racial harmony by making the use of "nigger" in a dreogatory manner illegal inside the city limits. Offenses would be punishable by a $500 fine, but only after someone filed a complaint with the city. At yesterday's public meeting about the proposal, "almost all speakers said they condemned the use of racial epithets," according to the Chronicle (we'd be interested to hear what the others said); the general feeling seemed to be that the law would cause more problems than it would solve. "I'm embarrassed for my little town," Bill Lott, who is white, said. "We need to unite, not divide." Others said they thought it was unfair to single out a single word as illegal when all races face slurs at some point, and many said it was pointless to outlaw the word in a town where they didn't think there were any race problems. "I don't use it, never have used it," John Corder told KTRK. "It's a mystery in a way, why do we need [the law]. We don't need it in Brazoria."

Corley, a 62-year-old white man who grew up in Brazoria County, said he never expected his proposal to draw the attention it did. "I know morally I'm doing the right thing," he told KPRC. "The media attention that this has created, I never expected this. I don't want it, and if there was a way to back out of this, I would." Even if Brazoria had adopted the ordinance, it probably would have been struck down in court as a violation of the First Amendment: "I was surprised to see that this was being proposed anywhere in the United States," David Hudson, an attorney with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, said. "It sounds like something you would see in France."