Papa John's founder John H. Schnatter is doing what many people do after it is revealed that they made racist comments. He's playing the victim. Schnatter admitted to using the N-Word during a role-playing exercise last week, and was forced to step down from his position as chairman for Papa John's. He was participating in a racial sensitivity training program when he stated, "Colonel Sanders called Blacks n***ers." It appeared as if he was trying to defend himself, since he was subject to the training for making questionable statements about the NFL player's protests last season.
In an interview with WLKY, Schnatter does some backtracking and states that he only used to word to illustrate that he didn't want to use the word. Sounds confusing, right? "I was just repeating what someone else said, I was actually kind of provoked a little bit to use that word," claims Schnatter. He also stated that the marketing agency that carried out the training tried to blackmail him once he said the N-word. "They wanted $6 million to make it go away. I'm like, ‘I'm not paying you $6 million,’” Schnatter claimed. “And they made it pretty clear, the words were ‘If I don't get my f-ing money, I'm going to bury the founder,’ said one of the executives. So, I'm not for sale. They can take the $6 million and whatever, they're not getting it. So, yeah they tried to extort us and we held firm. They took what I said and they ran to Forbes and Forbes printed it and it went viral.”