In an incident captured on video, Riordan, the former Los Angeles mayor, stunned participants in a promotional event July 1 at the Santa Barbara library by jokingly telling a 6-year-old her name, Isis, meant "stupid dirty girl."
Democratic state Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally called on Riordan to step down, telling the San Jose Mercury News the child was a "little African-American girl."
"Would he (Riordan) have done that to a white girl?" Dymally asked.
But the lawmaker reversed himself and canceled a planned civil-rights demonstration after finding out the girl is white.
Black civil-rights activists canceled plans for a protest after discovering a child insulted by California Education Secretary Richard Riordan was not African-American as originally believed, but a blonde, white girl.
"Mayor Richard Riordan has extended another apology ... and expressed his regret to me by way of a Los Angeles bishop," Dymally said in a statement. "To err is human; to forgive is divine. I have requested a meeting with Secretary Riordan to further discuss the issue."
