Look at this GOP clown, a casting-call stereotype of a Southern bigot. (I approve of his colorful outfit because it makes it so much easier for non-bigots to see him coming.) He actually interrupted a Black colleague during a school choice debate on the floor to Wednesday to ask if he could have gone to Harvard if he wasn't “an athlete or a minority.” Via the News & Observer:

Rep. Jeff McNeely, a Republican from Stony Point and a member of the chamber’s ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, made his remarks during floor debate Wednesday on a controversial education bill. Legislators were arguing over a bill that would expand the eligibility requirements for North Carolina Opportunity Scholarships.

As Rep. Abe Jones, a Democratic lawmaker from Raleigh, debated the bill, McNeely interrupted with a question. “I understand that you went into public schools and you went to Harvard and Harvard Law,” McNeely said to Jones, who is Black. “And the question I guess, is, would you have been able to maybe achieve this if you were not an athlete or a minority or any of these things, but you were a student trapped in a school that the slowest — you know, in the wild we’ll say the slowest gazelle does not survive, but yet the herd moves at that pace. So the brightest child sometimes is held back in order — “

Before McNeely could finish his comment, House Democratic leader Robert Reives interjected, calling for a point of order. “I’m hoping I wasn’t the only one that got shocked by that comment,” Reives said. “The only reason you went to Harvard is because you were Black and an athlete?” “I did not say that,” McNeely replied. “I said, would that, did that end up being one of the reasons? I do not know that. I asked him this.”