'I don’t know about that man': GOP lawmaker slammed for calling Black congressman a slur
U.S. Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger speaking with attendees at the 2021 Young Women's Leadership Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas. (Image: Gage Skidmore / Creative Commons)
A clip from a podcast did not go over well on social media as commenters dragged U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) for calling U.S. Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) “boy.”
“Gosh dang it, boy. Put that – He does not need that cane. That cane is a prop. I swear it’s not real,” Harshbarger said in the clip first posted by Heartland Signal on X. "And I'm wondering, one of my colleagues said unscrew the gold part off of it and see if there's a gun in there. I don’t know about that man. He’s just Weird Al.”
Harshbarger was referring to the Democrat's reactions during Donald Trump’s joint address to congress, which included hoisting signs of protest, wearing pink or, in Green’s case, pointing his cane at the president and heckling him, before being escorted from the chamber.
“I wanted to go over there and grab a few of them [Democrats] but Al Green was over here with his cane,” Harshbarger told an interviewer.
Reaction on quickly noted the American South’s long history of emasculating Black men by calling them "boy."
"She called a Black man 'boy,'" progressive podcaster Fred Wellman tweeted, while calling Harshbarger a "racist."
Democratic Georgia state senate candidate Jerrold Dagen quote-tweeted the clip and called on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to call for a censure vote against Harshbarger. Another commentator opined: "Hell is too good for folk like this."
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“Imagine if (Green) called her ‘little girl’ and accused her of being a weird person who conceals a weapon by pretending to need a medical device to get around?” asked a fourth. “The GOP would be outraged by such an accusation!”
Harshbarger was originally elected in 2020, after winning a 17-way Republican primary for Tennessee' 1st Congressional District. In 2013, her husband, Robert Harshbarger, was sentenced to four years in federal prison for committing healthcare fraud as part of a pharmacy he ran, and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution. Her son, Bobby, is a Republican state senator for Tennessee's 4th Senate District.
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