Jasmine Crockett Claps Back At JD Vance's Racist Comments
Rep. Jasmine Crockett Says She Won’t Be ‘Distracted’ By VP JD Vance Attacking Her With ‘Racist Tropes’
- Kamala Harris' failure shows the high bar Black women face to be elected.
- JD Vance's racist attacks on Crockett reflect normalized bigotry in MAGA politics.
- Crockett rejects Vance's slurs, focusing on her credentials and authentic Blackness.
It’s a shame that being a prominent, outspoken Black woman in politics means you will spend your entire career justifying your very existence. One of the reasons Kamala Harris isn’t sitting in the Oval Office right now is that the misogynoir Black woman politicians have to fight through just to be marginally respected, let alone elected, is far too great. In the era of MAGA, it only seems to be getting worse.
On Monday, we reported that Vice President JD Vance spoke during a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix, during which he declared to his predominantly Caucasian audience, “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore,” as if there was ever a time when the largest and most powerful racial demographic in the world has ever been compelled to apologize for upholding white supremacy for 400 years, let alone just being white. As I noted in that report, when Vance says white people don’t have to apologize for being white, “what he’s actually saying is they don’t need to apologize for being racist.” And he demonstrated that in the same speech when he told his audience that Rep. Jasmine Crockett “wants to be a senator, though her street girl persona is about as real as her nails.”
Vance’s brand of dog-whistling racism is nothing new to Crockett, which is why her clapback was as casual and unbothered as the blatant bigotry is when it comes from every mouth representing the Trump administration.
“Anybody that you talk to knows my credentials. They know that I’ve gone to school. They know that I’m educated…but at the end of the day, I am who I am, and I am authentic,” Crockett said Thursday, on MS Now’s The Weekend: Primetime, recalling that Vance’s “street girl” reference mirrored the same “racist tropes” she had heard her “entire life.”
“That is actually what they are fearful of…my authenticity, because it rings true with every single American, whether they’re a Texan or not,” Crockett continued.
As I wrote previously, Crockett has never once claimed to be a “street girl,” a wannabe “gangsta” from the “hood” or the “fake ghetto hoodrat” white conservatives have repeatedly accused her of being, not because she has ever presented herself as such, but because they’re racist; so racist, in fact, that they can’t differentiate between authentic Blackness and what they consider “ghetto.” It’s the kind of blatant anti-Black racism that should be condemned — especially when it’s being perpetuated by the president, vice president, or any elected official — but, instead, it has been normalized by the MAGA world’s effort to make bigotry commonplace again.
Still, Crockett isn’t cracking under that pressure, and she said she won’t be “distracted” by Vance’s remarks.
“When they can tell me about their policies that are helping Texas, then we can have a conversation,” she said. “Until then, take whatever shots you want to take at me, because I have been a Black woman my entire life.”
Exactly.
SEE ALSO:
Texas Tough: Rep. Jasmine Crockett Officially Launches US Senate Run
