At an event this week hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, President Biden mispronounced the rapper’s name and referred to him as a “boy.”
Biden remarked, “LL J Cool J, uhh, by the way, that boy’s got — that guy’s got biceps larger than my thighs,” while speaking at the 2023 Phoenix Awards Dinner in DC.
It was Biden who said that LL Cool J (real name is James Todd Smith) and MC Lyte are “two of the truly outstanding performers in our time” and also represent the “groundbreaking legacy” of all hip hop in the US.
When Biden talks about people, the word “boy” comes up. This has caused problems with black people in particular.
In 2019, when Biden was running for president, he was attacked for what he had said pertaining to working with widely recognized segregationists in the U.S. Senate and making room for politeness. Biden said of Senator James O. Eastland (D-MS), who was known as the “Voice for the White South,” “He did not once call me ‘boy,’ he always referred to me as ‘son.’”
Some people told Biden, “You shouldn’t joke with regard to calling black men ‘boys.’” One of them was Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), a black man running for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president at the time.
“There is not a single racist bone anywhere in my body,” Biden said to explain himself. He even asked Booker if he was sorry. After the fact, Biden said he knew what the word “consequence” meant, but he denied saying it “in any of that context.”
Earlier in the year, Biden called Maryland’s Democrat Governor Wes Moore, who is also black, a “boy” while making a joke about how he looked as a former university football player.
“You received a hell of a new governor in Wes Moore, I assure you,” Biden stated in Maryland. “That’s the real deal. The boy still seems to be able to play. He had some guns on him.
Biden has made a lot of mistakes over the years, but lately, those mistakes have become more of a worry as he runs for a second term in the White House. This is because the president is 80 years old, he often loses his train of thought while talking, and there have been times when cameras have caught him tripping or falling over.
