Oakland mayor’s chief of staff fired after referring to black people as ‘tokens’

Breitbart ^ | 04/08/2025 | Isabel Keane

[ChicagoConservative27]

A high-ranking city official in Oakland, California, has been fired over a resurfaced note that showed her referring to black people as “tokens,” according to reports.

Chief of staff Leigh Hanson was fired Sunday over the alleged note, which was released last week alongside other documents related to an FBI probe that prompted the indictment of the city’s previous mayor, Sheng Thao, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Hanson was hired by Thao as her chief of staff in 2023, and penned the note as part of her then-boss’s doomed bid to fight being recalled, KRON reported.

[ChicagoConservative27]

Well well well. Racist lefty strikes again.

[Magnum44]

[brownsfan]

It’s how the left views the world. Everything is about race and the left doesn’t hold non whites in high esteem.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

“These handwritten meeting notes record a group discussion that included proposed messaging points that the anti-recall campaign wanted to provide to potential surrogates,” she said in her statement prior to reports circulating. “They are a specific reference to Seneca Scott, a paid African American political operative, who was hired by the wealthy white funders of the recall campaign to obscure the public’s understanding of the recall’s political origins.

In other words, she thinks it is OK to call this black person a "token" because he was a political operative advocating for a recall. Typical Leftist. Its OK to denigrate blacks if they aren't on board with your political positions.

[blackdog]

More outrageous was the reference to signature interference campaigns as action items. IOW, election interference.

[dayglored]

Wow. The old phrase "the token Negro" used to refer to the single black person in an otherwise all-white group, who was tacitly acknowledged to have been added to the group only to avoid charges of racist exclusion.

Is that different now that groups regularly have large percentages of black persons? If so, what does it mean now? I'm confused...

(I'm old, I'm confused a lot these days...)

[Salamander]

I came for this and you did not disappoint.

😆

[Red Badger]

One line read, “CM Fife can reach out to NAACP — use BP as tokens.”

[No name given]

As usual.

[No name given]

That’s how stupid and arrogant the left is.

[RightWingNutJob69]

Damn. Shit. That is whack!

[freefdny]

That’s Tolkien not Token.

[ABN 505]

I see token whites in TV commercials occasionally.

[Tom Tetroxide]

I’m surprised the word, “magic,” wasn’t used as well.

[x]

Seneca Scott is Cordelia Scott King’s (MLK’s wife’s) relative. Seneca has a labor organizing background and has written for some semi-conservative publications.

[Feckless]

Beat me to it

[bk1000]

“I see token whites in TV commercials occasionally. ”

If you see one, he, or she, is an uninformed dufus being enlightened by an intellectual black. A marketing person told me that advertisers DEMAND diversity in their ads. If only two people are in the ad,…well, that explains all the interracial couples in commercials. Apparently they believe that blacks will not buy their product if they aren’t seen using it it commercials.

[bobbo666]

This is politics in CaCaLand. Tell the truth and you get attacked.

[hanamizu]

I have noticed that nearly all of the air-freshener type ads, cleaning product ads, deodorant ads are typically all black now.

[central_va]

Every household cleaning product shows the man doing the house work.