What was supposed to be a peaceful phone call to discuss the lack of Latino artists being named Kennedy Center honorees turned into a nasty dispute between 30 national Latino organizations and Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser.
Felix Sanchez, the chairman for the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, said after he made the call, Kaiser allegedly responded to him, "go f*** yourself," according to Fox News Latino.
Now, the coalition of Latino organizations is demanding that Kaiser apologize.
"There is no excuse for Mr. Kaiser's outburst and it should not and cannot be tolerated," said Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, said in a statement sent to Fox News Latino. "He profoundly disrespected our colleague Felix Sanchez and the Latino community, a community that merits inclusion and fairness, not insults, when it comes to one of the nation's highest cultural honors."
After the call, Fox says, Kaiser hung up the phone and has not spoken to Sanchez since.
"Of course, they have no good answer and so it was easy to get infuriated and to simply dismiss me and my criticism of the Kennedy Center honors," Sanchez said to Fox. "Rather than consider that there is no answer, that there is no defense because the actions are indefensible, he resorted to profanity and hanging the phone up on me."
A spokesman for the Kennedy Center did tell Fox that "in no way alters the long-standing commitment to a robust and diverse programming agenda at the Kennedy Center."
Kaiser later told the Washington Post that he did regret using that language with Sanchez.
"I've spent much of the last 20 years working with organizations of color in this country-African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American...," Kaiser told the Post. "This is a real part of who I am, and so when someone insinuates that I am a racist, it gets me really upset."
Fox Latino said that only two Hispanics out of more than 170 honorees have been selected since 1978.
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