NYC Education liaison Salvatore Ballarino resigned after coming under fire for forwarding racist jokes

Salvatore Ballarino, who was appointed by Borough President James Molinaro, to the Community Education Council District 31 in Staten Island, NY, resigned today after admitting to forwarding racist jokes about blacks.

In a released statement, Molinaro said he spoke with Ballarino today and asked him to resign. “He agreed, and he has resigned effective today.  His conduct was inappropriate and unacceptable as my appointee. Such comments about any race, people, or religion by anyone appointed by me will not be tolerated,” Molinaro said.

Ballarino served several years with the group that acts as a liaison between parents of students and the Education Department.

Last weekend when a local newspaper asked him about the emails that he forwarded on January 4, Ballarino said, it was “a joke. It was not a racial comment.”

When the newspaper asked him if he understood why some people might be offended by the email he said, “Everybody got to grow up a little bit.”

According to the NY Post, the emails were a series of photographs showing then-Sen. Obama and Senator McCain during a presidential debate, with invented dialogue superimposed in writing near their heads.

In the photos, McCain tells four jokes and Obama plays straight man, and according to the NY newspaper, McCain’s punch lines include one that refers to black people hanging from a tree, and another that equates black babies to excrement.

Ballarino said on Sunday that this email was just one of hundreds containing different jokes that he routinely forward to friends.

Ballarino, who claims to have many black friends said, last Sunday “I have plenty of black friends, I drove black people home from work.”