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GREENSBORO — A comment that Guilford County commissioner Billy Yow called a running joke was labeled racist by Commissioner Carolyn Coleman.

Yow's remark Thursday came as Chairman Kirk Perkins recognized commissioners who attended a special legislative session earlier in the day at N.C. A&T. Perkins didn't call the names of all commissioners who went.

"We were there, too," Commissioner Melvin "Skip" Alston said over Perkins.

"Y'all all look alike," Yow said, grinning as he interrupted the chairman.

Perkins kept talking about the session. Coleman interrupted moments later.

"I want to make it clear, that, for him to make a statement like that, 'All of us look alike,' that's not funny," Coleman said.

The exchange capped a meeting marked with more interruptions among the commissioners than has been seen in several months.

Yow has waded into race-related issues before as a commissioner. In 2003 he compared the NAACP to the Taliban and white supremacist groups, comments that were later labeled racist by local NAACP leaders. That led to a vaguely written agreement that said the NAACP shouldn't be involved in county commissioner squabbles, but no apology from Yow.

Coleman is a national figure in the NAACP and worked in the civil rights movement in the Southeast.

After the meeting, which ended about a minute after Yow's comment, commissioners Coleman, Alston and Bruce Davis spoke about what Yow said.

They agreed that Yow's comment was inappropriate. Coleman was the most outspoken. She said she didn't feel it was appropriate for a member of one race to say that members from another all look the same.

Yow on Friday said that his comment was part of a running joke going around the board for more than a year.

Yow said Davis jokingly made a similar comment during previous chairman Paul Gibson's tenure.

And in April, when Davis tried to remember Shaw's name in a meeting, Shaw said "Linda" and joked, "I know, we all look the same." What Davis blamed on a "senior moment" received robust laughter from most of the commissioners at the time.

On the most recent mention of a group of people "all looking the same," Yow said Friday that Coleman was in a "foul mood" and that was why she jumped on the comment.

"She hasn't played the race card lately and she got to do it," Yow said.

Alston said Friday that Yow's comment wasn't a joke.

"It's typical of Billy (Yow) to shoot off of the mouth like that," Alston said. "And when he does it, Carolyn (Coleman) and Bruce (Davis) and I try to call him on the carpet."

The commissioners are known for their candor and occasionally bitter exchanges. Conversely, commissioners sometimes also deliver one-liners that bring laughter to the room.

The board appeared more contentious than funny Thursday. Board members talked over one another several times. A three-minute timer buzzed when commissioners spoke too long, though it often went ignored.

Perkins swung his gavel at least three times to settle the room and asked some commissioners to be quiet.

Yow and Alston, who often spar during meetings, frequently appended each other's proclamations. Then they asked whether each should have been re-elected.

After reviewing a resolution Yow backed on reintroducing a sales tax vote in November, Alston said that maybe voters would want to vote on Yow's seat again.

While Alston and Yow each won another term in the primary May 6, a quarter-cent sales tax was defeated by a 3-1 margin.

"Maybe they made a mistake," Alston said about Yow's re-election.

"If I was against you with my people, you wouldn't stand a chance," Yow said, "and I wouldn't against yours."

Registered voters in Yow's district are 85 percent white. The electorate in Alston's district is 70 percent black.

Others tangled on Thursday, too.

At one point Shaw asked for Coleman, who sits two chairs away on the board, to wait her turn to talk as she heard Coleman speaking under her breath.

"You can talk when I'm through," Shaw said, referring to the clock. "I'm losing time, and then you're interrupting me."

Alston, Coleman and Davis could not be reached by phone Friday.

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com