‘We’re Not Going Back!’: Al Green Slams White Congresswoman Who Called Him Racial Slur and Pushed Wild Conspiracy That His Cane He Waved at Trump Hides a Gun
Texas congressman Al Green said he usually ignores the insults or slurs he receives while walking through airports or going out to dinner. Those have only multiplied after his impromptu protest last month during a joint speech to Congress by President Donald Trump.
Green’s walking cane, which he waved furiously during the president’s address, has become a symbol of the resistance to the Trump agenda. And it has made Green a target both inside and outside the halls of Congress.
On Monday, one of his colleagues, Republican Tennessee Rep. Diana Harshbarger, alleged the cane was just a prop and in fact may have concealed a firearm. She also appeared to call Green, 77 years old, a “boy,” while discussing the Democrats’ protest of Trump’s speech.
For Green, that was a slur too far. He recalled how dehumanizing it was to hear his father called “a boy” and his mother, “a girl,” by racist whites.
“It was said to demean, to denigrate. It was said so you would know your place in society,” he said Tuesday at a press conference, flanked by Houston area civic and religious leaders.
“It’s not about Al Green,” the congressman continued. “We cannot allow for the normalization of these slurs.
He decided to speak out this time because it was a member of Congress who used the slur, he said.
“This was said over the airwaves, he said. “This is an attempt to normalize this type of slur, wittingly or unwittingly.”
President Trump has set “the tone and tenor, and it meanders all the way down,” Green said.
Green also addressed claims by Harshbarger and Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert that he didn’t need the cane. Boebert asserted in an interview last month, “If that gold-plated cane isn’t a pimp cane, I don’t know what is.”
“My cane is always with me, and there’s some who believe this cane has a weapon in it,” Green said. “I’m almost reluctant to say that it doesn’t.”
The congressman addressed the threats he routinely receives, adding, “If I don’t have police with me, then I’m going to have to defend myself.”
He asked a nearby photographer attending the press conference to authenticate that the cane was just that. No secret compartments concealing a weapon were found.
“This is a cane. I am ambulatory, but I do find this is quite beneficial when I’m climbing stairs,” said Green, referring to the cane as his “comforter.”
Green said he was “retiring” the cane he waved at Trump during the president’s speech to Congress.
“We persons of goodwill have to understand this isn’t as simple as a cane and a comment,” the congressman continued, returning to condemnation of the slur used against him.
He noted how it dates back to the 1600s, when Blacks were first brought to what would become the United States, “boy” was a way to classify a “permanent identifiable, subservient caste of people.”
“You’re born into it, you live your life in it, you die in it,” he said. “We are not going back to a caste system. We’ve suffered too long, fought too hard … for us to retreat back to this position. We’re not going to tolerate it.”
Houston City Councilwoman Carolyn Evans-Shabazz noted that Harshbarger has neither clarified or apologized for her “very disrespectful, “very offensive” comments. The East Tennessee congresswoman authored several posts published on X on Tuesday, but none addressed the controversy.
“It’s just a travesty,” Shabazz said.
Harshbarger, interviewed by conservative Christian podcaster Booney Crawford, said she wanted to grab some of the placards held by Democrats, which featured pithy statements like “Musk Steals” and “Save Medicare. She said she didn’t because “Al Green was over here with his cane, and I’m like, gosh, dang it, boy, put that … He does not need that cane.”
Missouri City Councilman Jeffrey Boney, a Green constituent, demanded a censure of Harshbarger and also of Boebert, just as the congressman was “unfairly” censured following his Trump protest.
“These things matter, and in 2025, we will not remain silent,” Boney said.