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In today’s episode of Racist Republicans Keep Telling On Themselves, Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) referred to Black people as “colored people” on the House floor Thursday during a debate over his proposed amendment to an annual defense policy bill, which the Congressional Black Caucus was not very happy about even before he used Jim Crow era language to defend it.
First, let’s start with what Crane’s proposed bill is all about. From NBC News:
Lawmakers were debating a series of GOP-backed amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, which the House aims to pass by the end of the week.
Crane said his amendment would prohibit the Defense Department from considering race, gender, religion, political affiliations or “any other ideological concepts” as the sole basis for recruitment training, education, promotion or retention decisions.
“The military was never intended to be, you know, inclusive. Its strength is not its diversity. Its strength is its standards,” said Crane, 43, a combat veteran.
“I’m going to tell you guys this right now you can: 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, it’s not going to be good,” he said.
So, basically, we have another conservative Republican who thinks if white men dominate any government department (or corporation, college etc.) it’s because of merit, but once these entities start making efforts to diversify, everything going to fall apart because the non-whites are so incompetent. But because that’s a little too on the noose…sorry, I mean, nose as far as racism goes, they rely on the absolute myth that DEI and affirmative action policies involve hiring with race, ethnicity and gender as the sole qualifications for recruitment.
Crane and other GOPropagandists know the best way to discredit a thing they’re against is to lie about it, and they know how well it works, especially when their lies stoke the white grievances of their constituents. They know how simple it is to get their supporters to believe that DEI recruiters are just walking the streets pointing at the first Black face they see and saying, “Hey, you obviously check off every single box we’re looking for in an employee. Want a job?”
OK, so now we can get back to how “colored people” was the first term that came to the totally-not-racist Republican’s mind when referencing Black people.
“My amendment has nothing to do with whether or not colored people or Black people or anybody can serve,” Crane said. “It has nothing to do with any of that stuff.”
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who was previously the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, immediately let it be known she was having none of Crane’s not-so-casual racism.
“I find it offensive and very inappropriate,” she said in response to Crane’s language. “I am asking for unanimous consent to take down the words of referring to me or any of my colleagues as colored people.”
Then Crane tried to put the Klan greenie back in the segregation bottle by claiming he “misspoke” and meant to say “people of color.” (I’m sorry, but if you reflexively said “colored people,” it’s likely not the first time you’ve used that language.)
“In a heated floor debate on my amendment that would prohibit discrimination on the color of one’s skin in the Armed Forces, I misspoke,” Crane said in a statement. “Every one of us is made in the image of God and created equal.”
Anyway, despite the objections of Black legislators like Beatty—who previously said Crane’s amendment was designed to “undermine the freedoms for us to learn about one another, for us to hire one another, for us to understand our cultures”—the Republican-controlled House voted 214-210 in favor of Crane’s amendment.
It’s almost as if America “was never intended to be, you know, inclusive.”
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