Rightwing radio host makes up racist nickname for Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre

The conservative owner of a Tennessee radio station is defending racist comments he made about out White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during an episode of the station’s show, 3 Dudes with a View.

The show takes place on WKOM 101.7 FM and is hosted by Jim York, Clayton Harris, and the station’s owner, Delk Kennedy. The trio was discussing Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban and touting misinformation about what healthcare looks like for trans youth when Kennedy began speaking about the White House.

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“President Biden has come — both he and Buckwheat Jean-Pierre have come out and in favor of a national law, allowing minors without the consent of their parents to have gender changing procedures,” he said, according to the Advocate.

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Kennedy referred to Jean-Pierre as “Buckwheat,” the name of a Black character from the 1930s show The Little Rascals/Our Gang who has long been criticized as a racist stereotype.

Moreover, this statement is false. Transgender minors almost never receive gender-affirming surgery, and parents are involved in their kids’ care. While Biden and Jean-Pierre have expressed support for best practice gender-affirming care that has proven to vastly improve the mental health of trans youth, the Biden administration’s position is that medical decisions are best left to families and their doctors.

According to the station’s website, Kennedy is a lawyer who has worked in the district attorney’s office and the U.S. Attorney’s office. As such, he should presumably have a good understanding of law. Yet he continued to spread misinformation about the law.

“In some cases, states have enacted laws — California, places like that — where if a child wants gender-changing surgery and the parents won’t consent, the child can be removed from the home as abused and neglected, placed in foster care, and be given the gender changing procedures.”

This is a rightwing myth being spread about California’s A.B. 665, which is actually about giving kids on the state’s Medi-Cal program the same access to mental health treatments like talk therapy that kids whose parents have access to private insurance already have. Youth of color are more likely than their white peers to be enrolled in Medi-Cal. The bill is not about taking kids away from their parents.

Kennedy received a slew of complaints about his racist comment toward Jean-Pierre but still decided to joke about it all the next day.

“There we go, Buckwheat, Buckwheat, Buckwheat,” Kennedy said after one of his co-hosts joked that “you calling her Buckwheat just really set these white folks off.”

Kennedy also claimed the name was a “compliment” since Buckwheat “is an intelligent, admirable character.”

“Buckwheat in Little Rascals is not some stereotypical old song of the South Darkie,” he then said. “He is a very admirable, smart, capable person.”