President Biden is under fire again for referring to top White House adviser Cedric Richmond as a “boy” during a FEMA briefing on hurricane damage in Louisiana on Monday.
“I’m here with, uh, my senior adviser and, uh, boy who knows Louisiana very, very well, man, and New Orleans, Cedric Richmond,” Biden said.
RT reports: Calling a black man a “boy” is considered a racist pejorative, rooted in insulting references to slaves.
The remark was instantly met with backlash on social media. Republican Party spokesperson Paris Dennard, a former White House worker in both the Trump and George W. Bush administrations, was among the detractors, pointing out that Richmond is 47 years old.
“While Ja’Ron Smith was 38 years old when he was in a similar role for President [Donald] Trump, I can assure he was not called a boy by President Trump,” said Dennard, who is black. “Joe Biden just continues to insult black men openly and in public because he doesn’t care.”
During his presidential campaign last year, Biden made a number of racial gaffes, including telling a black radio host, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” He also made fun of a black journalist who asked if he would take a cognitive ability test, adding, “Come on, dude. That’s like asking you if you had done a drug test before coming on this program to see if you were using cocaine or not. So, what are your thoughts on this? Is it true that you’re a junkie?”
Biden also has previously drawn criticism for his use of the word “boy.” Speaking at a 2019 fundraiser, he described how he had worked with segregationists in the US Senate in the 1970s and 1980s and noted that “at least there was some civility,” as a notoriously racist Mississippi Democrat “never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”
When then-senator Barack Obama was running for president in 2007, Biden told a reporter, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s storybook, man.”