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By Naomi Lakritz

Coun. Ward Sutherland woke up one morning last week to discover that he is a racist.

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The night before, at a pre-election forum, he’d been talking about how the city needs to commission its public art from local artists. He says he made a mixed-up reference to “Johnny Choo,” because at the moment, thoughts of the TV show Sex and the City, New York, shoes and a designer whose name started with J got jumbled up in his head as he reached for a phrase to describe his opposition to commissioning foreign artists.

Some people — though not the ones at the forum — thought he said “Johnny Jew.”

“Nobody at the forum said anything. No one reacted,” Sutherland said in a weekend phone conversation. “The forum was over. I went home. It’s 10 o’clock. I go to bed. At 4 a.m., I’m a racist on social media.”

As a Jewish constituent of Sutherland’s, I have to say I’ve never heard of that particular slur. A quick Google search turns up Urban Dictionary’s definition of Johnny Jew as the usual stereotypical insinuation of Jews being cheap.