As the House Oversight Committee continued its debate over Republican efforts to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress, the hearing has frequently disintegrated into incoherence. Part of that came from Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, who both insisted that the president’s son be immediately arrested and claimed Democrats were using “white privilege” to protect the president’s son.
Unfortunately for Mace, that claim got blasted by Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and when Mace tried to defend her statement, her claims were eviscerated by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Soon after Mace accused Democrats of “white privilege,” Crockett blasted her, saying that Mace had no place speaking about white privilege and that it was “a spit in the face” for Mace “to talk about what white privilege looks like.”
Mace took umbrage at being called out and defended herself by saying that she had served on the former Civil Rights Subcommittee. She followed that up with a textbook demonstration of being racially tone-deaf.
First, Mace said that she can’t be accused of white privilege, because in her district, whites are privileged. “I take great pride as a white female Republican to address the inadequacies in our country,” she said. “I come from a district where rich and poor is literally Black and white, Black versus white.”
She went on to say that in the past two years, there have been “seven or eight” deaths in the largest jail in her district. Also, she noted that police kill Black men in her district. She argued that in her district, white people are richer and Black people get killed. Which doesn’t sound like a great reason not to accuse her of upholding white privilege. But she didn’t stop there.
“I come from a district where the … first Black man in the U.S. House of Representatives was Joseph P. Rainey [who] represented my district back in the 1800s,” she said, referring to Joseph H. Rainey, a Black representative first elected in 1870.
She continued: “In my district was Harriet Tubman, you can see in the movie ‘Harriet,’ who rescued more than 700 slaves in one night in Beaufort County, South Carolina.”
So there you have it. Mace can’t be accused of white privilege, because white people in her district are richer, Black people get killed, and Black people had some level of power there 150 years ago.
Thankfully, Ocasio-Cortez got a chance to reply.
“I’m just going to address briefly, quickly, that moment about privilege and all of this that we are seeing here,” Ocasio-Cortez began. “It was a very beautiful speech by the gentlelady who, as she mentioned, helped lead the now-majority side of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee. But I think it’s so exemplary of the point that she also oversaw the elimination of the Civil Rights Subcommittee.”
“Which really kind of gives the whole game away,” the representative from New York continued. “We show up, we give speeches, we give flowery words, but, at the end of the day, participate in the structural erosion of the rights and representation of people that are marginalized.”
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
