Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett went on a racial rant against Republicans Wednesday during a House Oversight Committee hearing, stating that Black Americans didn’t “ask to be here.”
The House Oversight Committee held a full markup hearing to consider pieces of legislation, including the Republican-led H.R. 8706, also known as the Dismantle DEI Act. During the hearing, Crockett claimed that Republicans had misused words like “oppression,” stating they didn’t understand what the word meant because they were white.
“It’s because you can then misuse words like oppression. There has been no oppression for the white man in this country. You tell me which white men were dragged out of their homes. You tell me which one of them got dragged all the way across an ocean and told that ‘You are going to go and work. We are going to steal your wives. We are going to rape your wives.’ That didn’t happen. That is oppression,” Crockett said.
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“We didn’t ask to be here. We’re not the same migrants that y’all constantly come up against. We didn’t run away from home. We were stolen,” Crockett added. “So yeah, we are going to sit here and be offended when you want to sit here and act like and don’t let it escape you that it is white men on this side of the aisle telling us people of color on this side of the aisle that y’all are the ones being oppressed. That y’all are the ones that are being harmed.”
In June, Republican Texas Rep. Michael Cloud and Vice President-elect JD Vance introduced legislation seeking to dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) within government offices, as well as to ban “federal contractors from mandating DEI statements or trainings,” according to a press release. In addition to barring federal grants from funding diversity initiatives, another provision of the bill would also seek to “prevent accreditation agencies from requiring DEI in schools and bar national securities associations, like NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange, from instituting diversity requirements for corporate boards.”
Crockett has previously used race as a talking point during committee hearings, lashing out in September at a Republican witness testifying and claiming he would be afraid to listen to a “qualified Black woman” like Vice President Kamala Harris.
Featured Image Credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America
