During a floor debate on racial impact statements, a Washington State Republican Senator, Jim Honeyford, stated that “colored” people are more likely to commit crimes. While responding to fellow Senator Democrat Bob Hasegawa, to clarify an earlier remark, Honeyford stated:
I said the poor are more likely to commit crimes and colored most likely to be poor. I didn’t say anything else other that. And I believe that’s an accepted fact. If you check any of your sociology books or anything else, you’ll find that’s an accepted fact of our society.
His comment drew criticism from multiple sources. Honeyford later tried to explain his comments to MSNBC, through an e-mail, in which he stated:
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My question to the Forecast Council was ‘people of color re (sic) generally poor. The poor are more likely to commit crimes.’ Later when I repeated the statement I mistakenly omitted ‘people of.
To be fair, earlier during the hearing, Honeyford did use the more socially appropriate term “people of color”, when he said:
It’s generally accepted that the poor are more likely to commit crimes. And generally, I think accepted that people of color are more likely poor than not.
Even then, of course, the Senator mangled the facts. While people of color may constitute a disproportionate percentage of people in poverty, most people of color in the U.S., and in Washington State, are not poor.
While Honeyford’s use of the term “colored” may have been a Freudian slip of sorts, it is the kind of utterance that, almost by definition, could only be made by someone who hasn’t pushed that antiquated term out of their vocabulary entirely. A person who never uses the words “colored” to describe people of color in private, is not likely to slip up and use the term in public.
When Senator Honeyford spoke to KIMA TV to clarify his remarks, he used another old-fashioned term to refer to African-Americans. Senator Honeyford explained:
But they were talking about people of color and that’s not just the negro or the hispanic- it’s the whole group of minorities.
Language matters, and the fact that the State Senator is still using the racial verbiage of a half-century ago, suggests that his attitudes on race might be mired in the pre-civil rights era as well.
Senator Honeyford lives in Sunnyside, a majority Latino city of just over 15,000 residents. Minority voters should think carefully before slotting him in for another term as their State Senator. They would probably be better served by a representative who doesn’t just blurt out that “coloreds” commit more crime, on the Senate floor during a debate over racial impact statements.
Keith Brekhus is a progressive American who currently resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He is co-host for the Liberal Fix radio show. He holds a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri. In 2002, he ran for Congress as a Green Party candidate in the state of Missouri. In 2014, he worked as a field organizer for Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick’s successful re-election bid in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District. He can be followed on Twitter @keithbrekhus or on Facebook.
