Source: Rodin Eckenroth / Getty
Democratic congresswoman
delivered a fiery rebuttal and lesson on privilege to another congressman that went viral.
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett stands by her forceful speech in which she dressed down a Republican colleague about his use of the word “oppression.” The moment took place during a House of Representatives Committee meeting on a proposed bill presented by a Republican congressman from her state of Texas, Michael Cloud. The bill, nicknamed “Dismantle DEI,” was mentioned constantly by Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins who called DEI initiatives “oppressive.” Crockett would have none of it. “It seems you don’t understand the definition of oppression,” she stated before.
“There has been no oppression for the white man in this country,” Crockett began. “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 were gonna go and work.” Referring to the enslavement of Africans in the country from the 1600s, she continued: “We are gonna steal your wives. We are gonna rape your wives. That didn’t happen, that is oppression. We didn’t ask to be here. We [are] not the same migrants that y’all constantly come up against. We didn’t run away from home; we were stolen. So yeah, we are gonna sit here and be offended when you wanna 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.”