Biden Reminisces About Seeing ‘Colored Kids’ Go to Segregated Schools in First Post-Presidency Speech

Former President Joe Biden referred to black children as “colored kids” Tuesday as he explained what motivated him to get involved in politics during his first public remarks since leaving office.

Biden, 82, used the outdated and offensive term while telling an anecdote about his childhood move from Scranton, Pa., to Wilmington, Del., in which he noted that before his family relocated to the First State, he’d “never seen hardly any black people.”

“I was only going in fourth grade,” he said as he recalled his mother driving him to Catholic school in Wilmington. “And I remember seeing kids going by, at the time called ‘colored kids,’ on a bus go by — they never turned right to go to Claymont High School.”

Biden said that learning that black children were not allowed to attend public school with white students “sparked my sense of outrage as a kid.”

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