On March 22, Steven Crowder returned to YouTube after a six-day absence and used a racial slur against Black people.
Crowder used the racial slur when discussing former Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who passed away in 2010.
Steven Crowder returns to YouTube using a racial slur
Written by Jason Campbell
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From the March 22, 2021, edition of Louder with Crowder, streamed on YouTube
STEVEN CROWDER (HOST): You mean a government that allows for a meritocracy, that's what you mean, which now you're complaining about -- I remember when he was talking about the tea party. He was like, “I don't understand why these tea baggers are so racist. OK? OK." And it's like, oh, so there you go. Now you're complaining about the fact that now everything is seen through the lens of race. You dismissed an entire group of people, an ideology of people. The tea party -- which, by the way, Rick Santelli, the rant was about taxation without representation. The idea was, listen, we're now increasing taxes, the deficit is a problem. We have wars that aren't really even being approved, right? This is the issue. So the tea party was about limited government, they left places cleaner than they found them, and you said, “I don't understand," dismissing them entirely through some vulgar sexual innuendo, why these tea baggers, and you wonder -- that would be like Robert Byrd with a hood outside a '60s civil rights protest saying, “What's eating the spooks?" Like, you'd think --
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And just to be clear, when I do an impression of Robert Byrd saying “spooks," that is very soft. Google Robert Byrd -- fourth in line for the presidency under Barack Obama if the wrong planes went down -- “Robert Byrd n-word." This guy wasn't just in the Klan, he had Klan dental and a company car. OK? He had a 401K for recruiting and lynchings.
DAVE LANDAU (CO-HOST): A 401KKK.
CROWDER: Yes, a 401KKK.
GERALD MORGAN (CO-HOST): A Democrat, correct? I'm just making sure I understand --
CROWDER: They all were.
MORGAN: Party affiliation.
CROWDER: Details baby, details. We go back --
LANDAU: Most Klansmen are Democratic.
Crowder has used this slur before on YouTube. During his March 9 show, he used it to reference Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex.
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From the March 9, 2021, edition of Louder with Crowder, streamed on YouTube
STEVEN CROWDER (HOST): If racism happened to be as prevalent as they claim that it is in the United States of America, where she was raised — of course they claim it's incredibly prevalent in Hollywood, which is where she worked — if it were so prevalent in Hollywood in the United States, why would she be shocked by something seemingly so innocuous? By the way, keep in mind that slavery has existed in the British Empire far longer than it was outlawed in the United States. People say “Oh, in England” — no no no, the British Empire. Sure you can talk about it being outlawed specifically with royalty in England, but the English Empire, it was still sustained by slavery, so why are you surprised? You've made it seem as though you faced borderline hate crimes in the United States your entire life. And if that's true, that's terrible. But it should be duck off of a biracial — water off a biracial duck's back if all they're just saying like, “Oh, I think your children might be a flat shade darker.” Who cares?
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“I've been the victim of hate crimes my entire” — look, if you think that American cops are racist, what do you think the royal guards will do to you?
DAVE LANDAU (GUEST): They only have billy clubs, though.
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CROWDER: Wait, wait, wait. This neighborhood's gone to shit, it has. I can't believe she's allowed here in the royal family tainting the gene pool. For us it's only brothers and sisters and flipper hands and grandkids --
LANDAU: I remember when it was nothing but cousins up in Buckingham Palace, doing it all night long.
CROWDER: That's right. We had to wheel them out of bed and make sure that we fit the [INAUDIBLE] of the tea mug in their flipper hand, right? With four fingers. That's the way royalty should look, not like these whippersnapper spooks.
LANDAU: No. Last thing you want in white skin is a little bit of a tan.
This was not the only instance of racism during this episode of Crowder’s March 22 show. In reference to comments by CNN’s Don Lemon claiming that Jesus was not white, Crowder said Jesus “probably looked more like a hijacker.” And while discussing a federal program “to provide short-term housing to migrant families who are not expelled by U.S. border officials,” co-host Dave Landau said that “at least” migrants staying in hotels in the United States “won’t need maids.”
YouTube claims to have a policy against racist bullying and hate speech, and the company previously took action against Crowder’s channel for such violations in 2019 before remonetizing his content last year.
During the previous week, one of Crowder’s videos -- which was widely condemned as racist -- was removed from YouTube for infringing the platform’s coronavirus policy. In the wake of widespread criticism, his show aired one episode in his absence, during which the crew and guest doubled down on their bigotry.