Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona referred to Black people as “colored people” on Thursday during floor debate over his proposed amendment to an annual defense policy bill, prompting a stern rebuke from the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
“My amendment has nothing to do with whether or not colored people or Black people or anybody can serve,” the first-term Republican said. “It has nothing to do with any of that stuff.”
The remark came as lawmakers were debating a series of GOP-backed amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, which the House is aiming to pass by the end of the week.
Crane said his amendment would prohibit the Defense Department from considering race, gender, religion, political affiliations or “any other ideological concepts” as the sole basis for recruitment training, education, promotion, or retention decisions.
“The military was never intended to be, you know, inclusive. Its strength is not its diversity. Its strength is its standards,” said Crane, a 43-year-old combat veteran.
“I’m going to tell you guys this right now you can, you can keep playing around these games with diversity, equity and inclusion. But there are some real threats out there. And if we keep messing around, and we keep lowering our standards it’s not going to be good,” he added.
Immediately after Crane finished his remarks, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, asked that the derogatory phrase he used be stricken from the record.
“I find it offensive and very inappropriate,” said Beatty, who served as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus in the previous Congress. “I am asking for unanimous consent to take down the words of referring to me or any of my colleagues as colored people.”
Crane interjected with a request to amend his comments to “people of color.” Beatty insisted, however, that the words be stricken from the record. They were removed by unanimous consent.
When reached for comment about his choice of words, Crane said that he “misspoke.”
“In a heated floor debate on my amendment that would prohibit discrimination on the color of one’s skin in the Armed Forces, I misspoke,” Crane said in a statement. “Every one of us is made in the image of God and created equal.”
Beatty, 73, had criticized Crane’s amendment as trying to “undermine the freedoms for us to learn about one another, for us to hire one another, for us to understand our cultures.”
The House is expected to vote on Crane’s amendment Thursday night.
Crane’s remarks come the same week that GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama refused to acknowledge that white nationalism is fundamentally racist.
In a CNN interview Monday night, when asked to clarify comments he made in May that appeared to defend white nationalists serving in the military, Tuberville insisted that not all white nationalists are racists. He instead suggested that they were simply people “that have a few, probably different beliefs.”
Rebecca Kaplan contributed.