Despite the increasing awareness of language and what is offensive and wrong to say, some individuals seem to be out of the loop. While everyone should be aware of the language they use, politicians—especially some GOP individuals—don’t seem to care. They seem to use slurs knowing how offensive and wrong they are. To make matters even worse, a recent incident occurred during a hearing about racial inequity. (Talk about bad timing.) After a presentation to the legislature on the racial wealth gap on Oct. 20, state Sen. Dave Rader, a Republican member of the Oklahoma Senate, used the term “yellow families” to describe Asian Americans, the Associated Press reported.

This not only left those at the meeting stunned, but resulted in backlash on social media as the video of the incident went viral. Of course, when asked about the term, Rader not only defended his use of it but has yet to apologize.

“It wasn’t ‘til well into your presentation did you go to yellow families. You left yellow families out for quite a while,” Rader said in reference to a presentation by Damion Shade, a policy analyst at the Oklahoma Policy Institute.

Shade corrected Rader by using the term “Asian Americans,” to which Rader responded: “You use Black term, White term, Brown term so I was just gonna jump in there with you.”

This followed Rader using the phrase “Asian distraction” instead of “Asian Americans,” at which he was corrected again and justified his remarks by saying: “Because their experience has been totally different than many um, than many others that have come over.”

This response, as noted by views of the video, perpetuated the “model minority” myth—a stereotype that claims all Asian Americans are likely to achieve socioeconomic success and are less likely to experience negative effects of racism and inequality in comparison to other races. Rader was thus slammed online for not only his use of the term “yellow,” but for perpetuating this stereotype.

Historically the word “yellow” has been used as a derogatory term to refer to East Asians. It stems from the “yellow peril,” an ideology where white folks claimed things from Asia were a great threat to the white world. Historians and other academics found that this ideology, amongst other forms of xenophobia, influenced U.S. policies on the basis “that Chinese people as a race, no matter where they are, are disease carriers.” As a result, anti-Asian laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 were enacted to block Asian immigration, and the term “yellow,” which was often associated with illness, was tied to Asian Americans.

Many individuals reacted to Rader’s comments, calling them upsetting. This includes local Oklahoma Rep. Cyndi Munson, ​​the first Asian American woman elected to office in the state.

“I remember people asking me if my dad had ‘yellow fever’ because my mother is Korean,” Munson told KFOR. “While it may not be intentional, that doesn’t mean that harm isn’t caused.”

Others also noted the setting and type of meeting the phrase was used in. “It’s troubling that he said it but it’s troubling that he doubled down,” Alicia Andrews, the chair of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, told KFOR. “The study was about racial inequities and here we are talking about his misuse of language.”

But according to Nick Singer, an activist with Oklahoma Progress Now, comments against Asian Americans were not the only offensive remarks Rader made during the hearing.

“Even his word choice, as abhorrent as it is, it’s the ideas underneath it that he tried to articulate in his very brief comments that are in my opinion far more problematic.

“He also makes comments about Black family structure, trying to suggest Black families didn’t succeed because they didn’t stay together.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time an official has used inappropriate language to describe Asian Americans. Another Republican senator came under fire earlier this month for using the term “you and your people” while speaking to Lucy H. Koh, a Korean American judge.

Koh is the first U.S. district court judge of Korean descent and the first female Korean American federal judge in the United States. Nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, if confirmed, Koh would be the first Korean American woman to serve as a federal appellate judge.

Elected officials should know better and realize words matter.