Arizona Republican refers to Black Americans as 'colored people' in House floor debate

Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty asked that his words be stricken from the record.

Keep the words in the record. Posterity should know.

Word choices aside, the more telling quote is this, "You can keep playing around these games with diversity, equity and inclusion. But there are some real threats out there. And if we keep messing around and we keep lowering our standards..."

For those that can't read between the lines, POCs, LGBTQIA+, women, and anyone else that's not a white male, are "lowering...standards".

“My amendment has nothing to do with whether or not colored people or Black people or anybody can serve,” said Crane, who is in his first term. “It has nothing to do with any of that stuff.”

I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's just a normal idiot racist who has a hard time thinking on the spot and got mixed up between "black people," "people of color," and trying really hard not to say the n-word as he would in his usual crowds.

Cue all the "First Amendment absolutists" who believe it's their right to call people whatever they want, as long as it's not the pronoun they prefer.

Referring to all non-white people as a single entity is bigotry in of itself.

I don't get how people of colour is any better lmao

The politically correct word changes every decade. "Black people" used to be more offensive than "colored people"

Disgusting, but I don't really see the point in having it stricken from the record. Keep it on record so it's part of Crane's legacy. I mean, why hide that he's a racist?

Not a native English speaker here. I had to scroll comments to even understand what's the problem. i still don't understand what's that "mega substantial difference" between "colored people" and "people of color". That's like, literally, grammatically the same. Sorry guys you are just trying hard to set yourself apart from that moron.

TIL "colored people" is offensive. Seems pretty benign to me...?

I had several coworkers at Best Buy that called black people colored. I got into so many arguments. Like dude, that's racist as fuck. The sad thing is most folks at that store didn't see the problem with it.

Its not just pedantic semantic, word choice matters. Language is fluid and mutable, acting like the meaning and context behind one phrase is the same as the other is ignorant to the current state of the US and its history.

For example, each of these sentence read differently depending on each word you emphasize, but the all say "the same thing".

I have a cookie, not you.

I have a cookie, not you.

I have a cookie, not you.

I have a cookie, not you.

I have a cookie, not you.

I have a cookie, not you.

Back in the Jim Crow days there were plenty of "Colored People" signs, but no "People of Color Signs".

Word choice matters.

I'm not reading the responses. Sorry not sorry.

You can tell that he knows he shouldn't say it because he immediately self-corrects and says, "black people". It's just that the slip already happened and he knows it can't be undone, so he keeps going to try to minimize the impact.

I thought People of Color was acceptable.

Openly saying what they’ve been saying behind closed doors.

When pressed on his remarks he clarified: "I meant to say them nigros are real good at pickin cotton. It's a compliment!"

Yet another complete piece of shit I don’t like this regression to outspoken racism being okay.

Can someone explain how colored people is anymore racist than people of color?

I mean, I'm not claiming it's not racist, I'm white so I'm not subjected to these terminologies myself, I just can't wrap my head around why one is different.

What the fuck is wrong with the GOP right now?

How hard is it to not slip a racial slur or try to say that white nationalism isn't racist on national TV?

surprisedpikachu.jpg

He probably meant to say, "people of color," but "accidentally" --or maybe on purpose-- slipped up as a signaling mechanism to his base.

That said, I am entirely on board with the idea that "POC" is a problematic term in the sense that all it is, is a socially acceptable inversion of "colored people," that still draws the same phony distinction between white people and everyone else.

I don't for a moment argue that there aren't valid reasons for talking about "racial" categories when it comes to things like diversity equity and inclusion, since those are the phony constructs upon which our society is built, rather, my point is that we need to move away from terminology that supports these phony distinctions, and that as such, using terms that basically mean "non-white," is a habit we should try to grow out of since they are based on phony bullshit ideas about race that don't actually have any currency in reality.

NAACP literally stands for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

There are actual real issues to get angry about. Pick your fights. This is literally another media concocted nothing-burger.

The question should really be, how did everyone react to this? Yes one was upset, but there must be a good amount of people there, lets see their faces and what they did, let them show their true colors, not in the ads they sell, but their actions in this moment.

Some of these comments are super disappointing. Language is constantly changing, why wouldn't the words minority groups use change as well? Especially considering bigoted slang is also constantly changing.

[Can I just inject a meta comment that the threading system makes is nearly impossible to see who is replying to whom, and in discussions like this (and the one with the question about Sealioning and Tankies) it is important.]

not a lot of difference between "colored people" and "people of color"

He's going to prison for this, isn't he?

Permanently Deleted

Ohpresshawn!

That's fucking hilarious. Dude probably meant to say "people of color" but who knows that might even be offensive these days. It probably should be if "colored people" is considered offensive. They keep changing terms for shit and normal people can't keep up with everything. Get over it.