On Thursday, Marysville City Council hopeful Jean Cramer declared that she wants to keep her town, located about 50 miles northeast of Detroit in Michigan, “a white community as much as possible.” No, she didn’t whisper this in a private conversation. No, she didn’t text it or email it. She literally said it in a public forum.
Cramer uttered the numbingly racist declaration during a city election candidate forum in Marysville this past week. The forum moderator asked each of the five running for three open seats whether they thought that “the diversity of our community needs to be looked at, and if so, should we be more aggressive in attracting foreign-born citizens?” Before asking the question, the moderator gave some information on the city’s demographics. Between 2000 and 2015, half of the people who moved to the Great Lakes area were born abroad. Marysville is more than 90% white.
"My suggestion, recommendation: Keep Marysville a white community as much as possible," Cramer said. "Seriously. In other words, no foreign-born people," she continued. “In the past, we've experienced it's better to have, simply, American-born—no foreigners, no."
Surprising no one, the local paper reports, a “brief guffaw” swept the room. In what is the smallest sliver of relief, the other candidates rushed to disagree with her. "Just checking the calendar here and making sure it's still 2019," candidate Mike Deising said in response.
Incumbent Councilman Paul Wessel looked shocked, opened with a strong “Wow,” and suggested that anyone who can afford to live in Marysville should be part of the community. Mind you, the language of “afford” raises some eyebrows for racially coded language, too.
Kathy Hayman, the mayor pro tem, whose father was Syrian, had to take a moment before answering. She said, “I don’t even know that I can talk yet, I am so upset and shocked. … So basically, what you’ve said is that my father and his family had no business to be in this community.”
“My son-in-law is a black man and I have bi-racial grandchildren,” Hayman continued. “And I take this very personally what you’ve said, and I know that there’s nothing I can say that’s going to change your mind. ... We just need to have more kindness—that’s it.”
And in order to remove absolutely any benefit of the doubt, Cramer gave a brief interview after the forum. In it, she decided to cement her racist views by noting, among other things, that she’s against interracial marriage.
"As long as, how can I put this? What Kathy Hayman doesn't know is that her family is in the wrong," Cramer told the Port Huron Times Herald. "(A) husband and wife need to be the same race. Same thing with kids. That's how it's been from the beginning of, how can I say, when God created the heaven and the earth. He created Adam and Eve at the same time. But as far as me being against blacks, no I'm not."
Here’s Cramer talking about interracial marriage and using anti-immigration rhetoric, including asking, “What’s wrong with their own country?” and shrugging off the idea that she herself descends from immigrants:
I’d ask what year it is but somehow, this feels precisely the norm for 2019. And that’s got to change. And let this be a reminder that voting in local elections really, really does matter.