After a retiring member of Congress, Major Owens, called the only white candidate for his Brooklyn seat, City Council Member David Yassky, a “colonizer,” one of Mr. Yassky’s opponents sought to spin the congressman’s remarks to his own advantage.

“I’m the only one who knows how to deal with colonialism,” a Jamaica-born member of the state Assembly, Noah Nicholas Perry, said in a phone interview yesterday.

“I don’t necessarily agree with the congressman, but if that’s what he thinks, he should be supporting me,” Mr. Perry, 54, said. The congressman, who is in his 12th term, has endorsed his son, Chris Owens, 46, who declared his candidacy for his father’s seat in January. State Senator Carl Andrews has also entered the race, and other candidates may well emerge before the primary next summer.

Mr. Perry grew up in the parish of St. Andrews, while the island was still a British colony.

“As a little black boy, the color of my skin would deny me the privilege, had I been old enough to work, of being up front in a bank, or of having access to a lot of other privileges,” he said. Jamaica became an independent nation in 1962. The future assemblyman immigrated to Brooklyn at age 20.

Meanwhile, the younger Mr. Owens, administrator at a health-maintenance organization and a former school board president, declined to respond to a question from The New York Sun about whether he believes Mr. Yassky is a “colonizer.”

“I don’t know what that means,” the younger Mr. Owens said, adding that the congressman’s remark came in the context of a longer interview that appeared Friday in the Daily News.

Defending his father, the younger Mr. Owens told the Sun: “The congress man has earned the right to say whatever he wants to say, whatever way he wants to say it.”

In the five days since he declared his candidacy for the 11th District seat, Mr. Yassky has refrained from returning his opponents’ opening salvos. When asked for his response to the congressman’s allegations, Mr. Yassky said: “I hope this race will be about issues and ideas – and won’t be about personal attacks.”

Approximately 60% of voters in the 11th District, which includes Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Park Slope, are black. The elder Mr. Owens has represented the district since 1983, following the retirement of the nation’s first black congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm.

Last week, the elder Mr. Owens suggested that Mr. Yassky is trying to “buy this district.” Mr. Yassky, 41, a two-term council member and former aide to Senator Schumer, lives in Brooklyn Heights, outside the boundaries of the 11th District. Although that does not legally bar him from seeking the House seat, other candidates have already made Mr. Yassky’s residence an issue. “It shows that he doesn’t have the same type of a connection to the district that I do,” the younger Mr. Owens, who moved to Prospect Heights from San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1959, said.

Mr. Yassky said the residency issue was irrelevant to the election. “I live a block outside the gerrymandered lines of the congressional district,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Perry and the younger Mr. Owens both chastised Mr. Yassky for simultaneously running for City Council and Congress.

“Announcing, ‘I really don’t want the job, I’m running for Congress next year,’ that sends quite a message to voters,” Mr. Perry said.

A Yassky spokesman, Evan Thies, accused Mr. Perry of being hypocritical in his attack on the council member. “This is from a guy who is a sitting member of the state Assembly,” Mr.Thies said.