A bizarre video of a Missouri school board candidate making what appeared to be racist remarks about an Asian woman has resurfaced this week, prompting an apology from the candidate as his opponents called on voters to reject him.
In the expletive-laden tirade recorded inside a car, candidate Ryan Kerr appears to describe an Asian woman as a “panda.”
“We ain’t got no pandas in this car,” he says. Kerr then goes on to refer to a woman — who he said falsely accused him of assaulting her — as “a fat bag fuckin’ milk bag mule.”
Kerr said he recorded the video in 2016 and originally sent to “a small group” of friends, according to KSDK 5.
He also told the outlet that the four-minute rant was “a very targeted event, intoxicated, and immediately following [a] false allegation of assaulting a female.”
Kerr posted a seven-minute response video on Facebook, in which he claims the video has been on YouTube for seven years and was re-posted to Twitter in 2019 by the same person who “obviously vindictively” posted it last Sunday.
He says his reference to “pandas” was because one of the women had the nickname “panda” and that it was an allusion to the song “Panda” by Desiigner, a pop hit at the time.
In the Facebook video, Kerr also explains that at the time he felt his mental health was devolving and that after the incident he went to therapy, where he discovered he had “neurodivergency.”
He goes to say that “there is no excuse for the language used in that video, and there will never be an excuse for that language.”
Kerr is one of seven candidates running in the April 4 election for one of three open spots on the Parkway School District Board of Education, according to the St. Louis Post.