California Globe

San Francisco Mayor London Breed apologized on Thursday for comments she made earlier this month where said that many drug dealers in the Tenderloin district are Hondurans.

On October 5th, only days before the Los Angeles City Council racist recording scandal broke, Mayor Breed was giving an interview with KQED-FM and answered a question about the drastic rise of overdoses in the city. In it, she highlighted that many Hondurans are dealing fentanyl in the Tenderloin District.

“There are unfortunately a lot of people who come from a particular country, from Honduras. And a lot of the people who are dealing that drug happen to be of that ethnicity. It’s not about racial profiling. We all know it, it’s the reality. It’s what you see. It’s what’s out there.”

While not brought up at the time, the LA recording scandal, which so far has left the City Council in turmoil and resulting in City Council President Nury Martinez resigning in disgrace for saying multiple racist comments, led to a renewed scrutiny of comments that many lawmakers have said in the past. The video of Breed’s interview was one of them, with many in the Honduran community, as well as many citizens, began criticizing her for the comments.

On Thursday, Breed gave an apology at an event in the city, saying that “In trying to explain what is happening in the Tenderloin, I failed to accurately and comprehensively discuss what is an incredibly complex situation in our City and in Central America.”

Unlike man recent comment scandals, Breed’s apology was widely accepted, in large part due to that many drug dealers in the Tenderloin have been of Honduran descent, with Breed misspeaking and inadvertently insinuating otherwise.

“I accept the apology, only because we know that she meant well,” said Hispanic Chambers of Commerce of San Francisco President Carlos Solorzano on Thursday. “The Chamber’s research in 2018, done in eight blocks of the Tenderloin, showed most drug sellers were juveniles from Honduras, there to make money to send back to their families. But we also have to understand that we’re not naming only one ethnicity. That is not good enough anymore. With all the turmoil that we have between the Latino community, the African American, the Asian communities, we need to work more together. So, we need to be more conscious of what we say, when we’re pointing fingers especially on that.”

However, others noted that all Breed needed to give was a clarification, due to her being correct about the information.

“All she really had to do was say that Hondurans have been a main ethnic group dealing drugs there, or just not mention it. The question was about the rise of overdoses, and not really about who the dealers were. She just put her foot in her mouth without prompting, and because of the situation in LA, people found that comment and brought it up,” explained Rosa Ramirez, a community researcher in the Bay Area, to the Globe on Thursday. “What really happened is that she crewed up answering a question, gave correct information, was complained about weeks after the fact, then apologized for something that really just required a short clarification if that. It also dinged her credibility a bit. This should not have been an issue, but it was made one.”