President Joe Biden is being criticized after calling the black Democratic governor of Maryland “boy” during remarks on Wednesday.
“You got a hell of a new governor in Wes Moore, I tell ya,” Biden said in a speech to a group of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union members in Lanham, Maryland.
“He’s the real deal, and the boy looked like he could still play,” the president said. “He got some guns on him.”
Moore, 44, was a wide receiver on the Johns Hopkins University football team.
The online version of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary lists one definition (5a) of “boy” as “dated, offensive: a male servant or an enslaved man,” adding that it’s used in a “disparaging” way “to address a man of color and especially a Black man.”
“The deeply offensive use of the word boy to address an adult man of color has a strong association with sense 5a and is a term expressive of racist condescension,” it says.
Fox News labeled Biden’s remark the use of a “racially-charged term.”
Many on Twitter called out Biden and wondered why the use of the word went unchallenged by the mainstream media.
“Imagine if a Republican said this instead of Biden,” one poster wrote, while another said, “Where is the outrage from the media?” and a third wrote, “Why does Biden get a constant pass with his blatant racism?”
Why does Biden get a constant pass with his blatant racism and Democrats…. especially Black Democrats just let it slide every time… I have compiled SO many videos of other instances of this it's ridiculous. Wes Moore even though he's a Democrat is NOT a boy… he's a… https://t.co/nFang14PD0 pic.twitter.com/rTRYgh0L4b
— Benny S. (@BennySings) February 16, 2023
Biden called a black man "boy." This was not 50 years ago, it was today. He was talking about Maryland Gov Wes Moore.
Where is the outrage from the media?— TrueGrit (@MichaelTruGrit) February 15, 2023
Joe Biden refers to Democrat Wes Moore (Maryland's first Black governor) as "boy."
IMAGINE if a Republican said this instead of Biden.
pic.twitter.com/3n0C71hbBe— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) February 16, 2023
Of course Joe Biden called Black Maryland Governor Wes Moore, “boy.” He called Barack Obama, “the first mainstream [Black man] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
And those are some of his *least* racist comments — let alone his policies.
— Dumisani Washington (@DumisaniTemsgen) February 16, 2023
Biden was called out in 2019 by Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey over his use of the word, according to the New York Post.
“You don’t joke about calling black men ‘boys,’” Booker said in a statement.
As noted in 2011 by Billy Corriher in the Harvard Law and Policy Review, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that year “recognized that a supervisor’s use of the word ‘boy’ to refer to black employees is sufficient evidence of racism. It was the third time the court ruled on the case since a reprimand from the Supreme Court for finding that ‘boy’ was not evidence of discrimination.”
Corriher cited a court ruling that said, “The disputed word will not always be evidence of racial animus, it does not follow that the word, standing alone, is always benign.”
He added a personal postscript.
“Having grown up in the South, I am dumbfounded as to why it took the court so long to acknowledge that referring to a black man as ‘boy’ is racist,’ Corriher wrote. “Southerners have become accustomed to all manner of subtle racism, but there is nothing subtle about calling a black man ‘boy.’
“In an amicus brief, civil rights leaders presented historical evidence of the use of the word to subordinate and emasculate black men. The brief stated, ‘If not a proxy for “n*****,” it is at the very least a close cousin.’”
Story cited here.