Anger in the House as Republican Eli Crane uses racist and repugnant term for black Americans

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A Republican representative from Arizona has sparked an angry backlash in the House of Representatives after he used the term people of color to refer to black Americans during a floor debate.

Eli Cranes’ proposed amendment to an annual defense policy bill has been harshly chastised by the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus for his use of the outdated phrase to refer to people of color.

Joyce Beatty, the Democratic representative from Ohio, asked that the sentence be deleted from the record with the unanimous consent of the House.

My amendment has nothing to do with whether people of color or black people or anyone else can serve. It has nothing to do with any of that, Mr. Crane said during the debate on the GOP-backed amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act.

The military was never designed to be, you know, inclusive. Its strength is not its diversity. Its strength lies in its standards, he said.

I’m going to tell you now that you can: you can continue to play these games with diversity, fairness and inclusion. But there are real threats there. And if we keep messing around and keep lowering our standards, it’s not going to be good, the 43-year-old Republican said.

I find this offensive and very inappropriate. I seek unanimous consent to remove lyrics that reference me or any of my colleagues as people of color, 73-year-old Ms Beatty said shortly after Mr Cranes’ remarks.

At this point, Mr. Crane interrupted and asked that his statement be revised to use the phrase people of color instead.

The words were eventually stricken from the record by unanimous consent.

During a heated debate over my amendment that would ban discrimination on skin color in the armed forces, I misspoke, Mr Crane said in a statement. Each of us is created in the image of God and created equal.

On Thursday night, the House approved Mr Cranes’ amendment by a vote of 214 to 210.

It just happened on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. A House Republican just referred to black Americans serving in our military as people of color. In 2023, Rep. Don Beyer tweeted.

This is a shameful moment on the House floor, the Black Caucus tweeted.

Rep. Eli Crane referring to black servicemen who risk their lives for our country as people of color is inadmissible. The GOP fights against diversity, equity and inclusion training and proves every day why it is necessary.

Ms Beatty also took to social media after the debate to offer her response to the incident.

I’m still in shock and in disbelief that a Republican said the words people of color in reference to African American servicemen who sacrifice their lives for our freedom, she tweeted.

I will not tolerate such racist and repugnant language in the House of Representatives or anywhere in Congress. That’s why I asked that those words be struck from the record, which was done by unanimous consent.

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