President Joe Biden gave a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus on Saturday night, during which he messed up the name of rapper LL Cool J and referred to him as “boy.”
“Two of the great artists of our time representing the groundbreaking legacy of hip hop in America, LL Jay Cool J, uhhh…” Biden said as the crowd laughed. “By the way, that boy — that man’s got biceps bigger than my thighs.”
LL Cool J, whose birth name is James Todd Smith, received the Phoenix Award at the annual awards dinner in Washington, D.C., for his musical contributions. MC Lyte received the award alongside LL Cool J.
While Biden blew by the gaffe and moved on to acknowledging MC Lyte, several of the president’s opponents addressed the slip on social media.
RNC Research posted a clip of the moment on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
“It’s 2023, and he still talks like a slave master,” one user said in a post to X.
This is not the first time Biden has been caught referring to Black Americans as “boy,” which is considered a racial epithet when used to describe Black men.
Earlier this year, Biden called Wes Moore, Maryland’s first Black governor, “boy” while discussing the state leader.
“You got a hell of a new governor in Wes Moore, I tell ya,” Biden said before a Maryland crowd in February. “He’s the real deal, and the boy looked like he could still play. He got some guns on him.”
He was also criticized for his use of the word while on the campaign trail before the 2020 election.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) rebuked the president while competing with him for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying, “You don’t joke about calling black men ‘boys.’”