Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass. SSR), who wants us to know that we can refer to him by male pronouns (thus calling his claimed masculinity into question), summed up the high dudgeon that prevailed all over Washington on Tuesday: “Wow. Republicans are just openly calling my colleagues ‘colored people’ on the House Floor now. They’re bringing amendments to the floor to stop bases named after Confederate traitors from getting new names. The GOP is not even hiding the racism anymore.” McGovern and many of his colleagues were enraged at Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), who referred to “colored people” on the House floor Thursday, thus giving Leftist hysterics an opportunity to pretend that Bull Connor was strutting around again, setting fire hoses and German shepherds on poor, defenseless… people of color.
It was widely reported that Crane had used the forbidden phrase in reference to black Americans: NBC News headlined its story, “Arizona Republican refers to Black Americans as ‘colored people’ in House floor debate.” However, while speaking about an amendment he had proposed to a defense policy bill, Crane actually said this: “My amendment has nothing to do with whether or not colored people or black people or anybody can serve. It has nothing to do with any of that stuff.” This recalls the usage of South Africa even in the post-apartheid era, where people of mixed race are known as “colored people” and are considered a distinct category from “black people.”
Crane, however, is not South African, and he says he just got the words wrong: “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. Every one of us is made in the image of God and created equal.” That’s not going to calm anyone on the Left down. When saying “colored people” is an outrageous offense and evidence of a deeply rooted racism, but saying “people of color” shows one’s allyship and concern for healthy race relations, Crane ought to be excused for getting confused. The rules are arbitrary and the social death penalty—complete destruction of one’s reputation—that is handed down for infractions is unjust.
The arbitrariness and injustice are underscored by the fact that the acceptable phrase keeps changing, as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, baseball’s old Negro Leagues, and the United Negro College Fund bear witness. A few years ago, HBO revived Perry Mason, transforming Raymond Burr’s unbeatable defense attorney from the late Fifties and early Sixties into a private investigator in the 1930s. Today’s sensibilities being what they are, it is no surprise that the remake also changed Mason’s sidekick Paul Drake from white to black. But the writers of the series being witless twenty-first-century millennials with no knowledge of history, they baked in an anachronism. IMDB explains: “Drake repeatedly refers to himself as ‘black.’ In the 1930s, that word was considered a pejorative. ‘Colored’ or ‘Negro’ were the preferred, acceptable terms. The writers appear to have addressed this error in Season 2 with Drake now consistently using ‘colored.’”
Related: Baseball Announcer Utters Racial Slur by Mistake, May Get Fired (or Worse) Anyway
So if Eli Crane had used a term that was offensive in the 1930s instead of the term that was preferable then, all would be well. Of course, many of his detractors are saying that this is precisely the point, that he should know that the term he used was far outdated and is now considered offensive (although the NAACP has not changed its name to keep up with this evolving nomenclature). Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) fumed: “I find it offensive and very inappropriate. I am asking for unanimous consent to take down the words of referring to me or any of my colleagues as colored people.” NBC reports that “Crane interjected with a request to amend his comments to ‘people of color.’ Beatty insisted, however, that the words be stricken from the record. They were removed by unanimous consent.”
This was, of course, simply another episode of moral posturing from the Left. Crane inadvertently gave House Democrats and their propaganda arm, the establishment media, an opportunity to portray all Republicans and patriots as hidebound racists, and themselves as the party of enlightenment and racial justice. The whole episode, however, served only as a reminder of how hollow the Left’s claim of moral superiority really is, as it rests on tripwires that are not only completely arbitrary, but constantly changing. And that is the idea: the public must be made to be always afraid to give offense, because the result can be professional and personal ruin. Yet the nature of what exactly is offensive changes all the time. Arbitrary, changing rules that can destroy you if you violate them keep a population off-balance, frightened and docile. Perfect prey for authoritarian rulers.
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