A white GOP congresswoman who called Texas Rep. Al Green “boy” didn’t apologize for her comment Tuesday and instead claimed that the senior Black lawmaker is “blowing it out of proportion.”
More than 24 hours after an interview clip of her using the word in reference to Green gained attention, Tennessee Rep. Diana Harshbarger finally responded on social media.
“The weather is warming up, so naturally, the snowflakes are starting to melt!” Harshbarger wrote on X, reposting the clip of her interview with Tennessee religious group F.A.M.E. Ministries.
“I was discussing one of my colleague’s [sic] erratic behavior during President Trump’s Joint Address, and now he—along with the rest of the Radical Left—is blowing it out of proportion in a desperate attempt to get attention,“ she went on. ”BOY oh boy, you just can’t catch a break between the FAKE NEWS and young men wielding canes!”
Green, who is 77, held a press conference in Texas earlier Tuesday alongside other community leaders in which he noted his personal experience with such racially coded language.
“This is especially sensitive for me because, as a child, I remember my father being stopped by a peace officer, and the officer referred to my father as ‘boy.’ And my mother was ‘girl.’ And it wasn’t just that one time. It was the way society addressed people of color who were of African ancestry at the time,” Green said.
“It wasn’t said to indicate that you were youthful. It was said to demean, to degrade, to denigrate. It was said such that you would know your place in society, and it was something that you would have said immediately to you.”
Green never mentioned Harshbarger by name, but noted that due to her status and the fact that her comments came during an interview, the situation is “different” than if a layperson used the word to him on the street.
“This is an attempt to normalize, whether it’s done wittingly or unwittingly, this type of slur, and it’s something that we cannot tolerate,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the president has set the tone and tenor, and unfortunately the tone and tenor starts at the top and it meanders its way down,” he added. “We have to stop it and stop it now.”
As for Harshbarger’s accusation during her interview that Green’s cane is “not real,” and could even contain a weapon, Green showed otherwise.
“There are some who believe that this cane has a weapon in it. I’m almost reluctant to say that it doesn’t, to be quite honest,” he said, chuckling, “because there is some degree of safety in knowing that people might not bother to say some things or do some things that are ugly if they think I am armed.”
Green then invited a member of the press to inspect his cane. The reporter twisted at the base and the handle, revealing no secret compartment for weapons.
“I am ambulatory, but I find that it is quite beneficial when I’m climbing stairs,” Green explained. “It does give me some degree of stability that I need from time to time.”
Green said he would be retiring the item and replacing it with another, similar-looking cane he had also brought to the press conference.
Harshbarger isn’t the only Republican member of Congress to accuse Green on not needing his cane. Rep. Lauren Boebert did so while calling the device a “pimp cane”—another racially coded comment.