President Joe Biden sparked a backlash social media last week after forgetting the name of his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and referring to him instead as “the Black man.”
The president made the remark while speaking about his record of appointing black people in his administration during an interview with Black Entertainment Television (BET) on July 17.
Natural News reports: Biden said: “It’s all about treating people with dignity. For example, look at the heat I’m getting because I named a, uh, the secretary of defense, [unintelligible] Black man.” He then mentioned Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Black woman, as another example of his appointees.
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The ambiguity of whether Biden used “a” or “the” before describing Austin as Black added fuel to the debate. Some social media users on X expressed concerns about Biden’s mental acuity. One even argued that the clip was being misconstrued.
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“I think people are misconstruing this clip. If you listen closely, Biden seems to say ‘the secretary of defense, a black man’ not ‘the black man’; and the context is he’s listing his black appointees,” the X user posted.
ut critics accused the president of forgetting Austin’s name and simply referring to him as “the black man.”
“Let’s see how the Biden dead-enders spin this one,” one user posted on X.
“A POTUS who cannot remember the name of his SecDef — and instead calls him ‘the black man’ – is not mentally equipped to be in charge of 5,000 nuclear weapons,” another one posted.
Pierson in 2020: Biden has a long history of dehumanizing black Americans
This incident adds to a series of verbal gaffes by Biden over the decades, who has faced criticism for previous remarks about black voters and race.
In 2007, Biden faced backlash for describing then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.”
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden was quoted as saying. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Biden apologized the next day after the incident but insisted that his comments were taken out of context.
“I deeply regret any offense my remark in the New York Observer might have caused anyone. That was not my intent and I expressed that to Sen. Obama,” he said. “Barack Obama is probably the most exciting candidate that the Democratic or Republican Party has produced at least since I’ve been around. And he’s fresh. He’s new. He’s smart. He’s insightful. And I really regret that some have taken totally out of context my use of the word ‘clean.’ My mother has an expression: clean as a whistle, sharp as a tack.”
