Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry on Thursday defended his record of promoting harmony between different ethnic groups, but he stopped short of apologizing for comments that have drawn international outrage.
“I’m trying to demonstrate that this city has been one that welcomes all groups,” Barry said at a D.C Council hearing. “This council member, this former mayor, this fighter for justice has been at the forefront of that.”
He also cited his “history of extraordinary involvement, extraordinary service… against discrimination of any kind.”
Barry has been under intense scrutiny in recent days after he made an insensitive remark about Filipino nurses during a Monday budget hearing for the University of the District of Columbia.
“If you go to the hospital now, you find a number of immigrants who are nurses, particularly from the Philippines,” Barry said then. “And no offense, but let’s grow our own teachers, let’s grow our own nurses … so that we don’t have to be scrounging around in our community clinics and other kinds of places [and] having to hire people from somewhere else.”
The remark drew special attention because it came less than three weeks after Barry apologized for another comment about Asians in the District.
“We [have] got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops,” Barry said on April 3. “They ought to go.”
On Thursday, Barry blamed reporters for the latest firestorm.
“The media has a way of trying to divide us,” he said. “That’s their whole purpose, not to report the news, not to cover the news, [but] to take things out of context.”
Barry has often refused to talk to reporters about his comments this week.
“I’m sick of you all,” he told a Washington Examiner reporter this week.
On Wednesday, shortly after the Filipino ambassador called on the former mayor to apologize, Barry’s office did not comment.
Before apologizing for his comments in early April, Barry also blamed journalists before abruptly apologizing via Twitter and then with a lengthier written statement.
