Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: An uncomfortable truth about "Angry Black Women" in politics [View all]emmaverybo
(8,144 posts)senate colleagues, not to his use of son vs. boy in the larger world. He called Edward Kennedy boy. Boy is not exclusively used as a racial epithet. The term good old boys refers to the kind of white men who refer to other white men as boy.
In a non-racial context, it can be used as a friendly term, just as the Irish use the word lad or, more belittling, to express hierarchy as when a boss calls his clerk boy or a father his son, boy. The senator was putting Edward Kennedy in his place, not racially, but rather, as being less than he, the senator, in a ranking sense. As a racial epithet it is far more extreme in meaning and intent.
Biden should have anticipated how his story would be heard. He is simply not politically stupid enough though to have been referring to how the segregationist senator referred to black, as opposed to white men and making a joke of it. Nonetheless, he was short-sighted not to foresee that that would be many peoples understanding.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden