Speaking this Thursday during a Veterans Day event inside Arlington National Cemetery, President Joe Biden used a word that many find very offensive, referring to a black pitcher, Satchel Paige, as “the great Negro of the time,” giving clarification, “pitcher inside the Negro leagues,” the phrase used to describe the historically segregated baseball leagues for black players.
Biden said to the crowd, “I just want to say I have adopted the mindset of the great Negro of this time, the pitcher from the Negro leagues, who then became the great pitcher in the major league. That was Satchel Paige.”
“And he, on the day of his 47th birthday, pitched a win on Chicago,” Biden said. “And all the media went in and asked him, ‘Satch, it is amazing. 47 years old. Nobody’s ever pitched a win at 47 years old. How do you feel about this?’ He said, ‘That is not how I see it.’”
“They said, ‘How do you see it, Satch?’” Biden said, adding, “He said, ‘I see it like this: How old would you really be if you did not know how old you are?’”
Biden refers to “that great negro pitcher” Satchel Paige pic.twitter.com/ikFdGaixZT
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 11, 2021
A lot of criticism has been directed at leaders for using the term “Negro.” The Voice of America said in 2020 that Roger Stone, a Trump ally, called LA-based black radio host Morris O’Kelly a “Negro” during his interview, leading O’Kelly’s website to say, “Stone could have gone for any word, but unfortunately he went there,” and that “Stone gave an unfiltered one-sentence example of how he saw the journalist who was interviewing him.”
“O’Kelly said that ‘Negro’ was a ‘low-calorie N-Word,’” VOA said.
Back in 2013, the Census Bureau said it would no longer use the phrase “Negro.” In 2016, former President Obama signed a law banning the federal government from using the phrase “Negro,” permitting “African-American” instead.
In 2020, during his interview with popular black commentator Charlamagne tha God, Biden, who was running for the 2020 DNC nomination, defended his history on racial topics and, when told that the host had “more questions” for him, declared, “If you have a problem figuring out if you’re with me or Trump, then you are not black.”
Author: Steven Sinclaire