When it comes to speaking truth to power, few elected officials can match Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
She provided a solid example of her consistent stance against the Trump administration last week during a House Judiciary Committee Hearing about the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which is under indictment for its unwavering commitment against racism and white supremacy. Rather than pursuing the committee’s main purpose of dealing with the SPLC, Crockett focused her questions on witnesses, asking them if the Proud Boys and neo-Nazis, many of whom participated in the January 6, 2021, uprising at the U.S. Capitol, were white supremacists.
Witnesses whose testimony was aired on WLIB in response to Crockett’s question on WLIB were halting and unable to say with any certainty about the group’s affiliations with white supremacy, except for Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
“Let me be clear: Proud Boys are freaking white supremacists. Neo-Nazis are, too. And this president, who loves to coddle white supremacists, has decided that they should be given checks,” said Crockett. The checks the congressmember was referencing were the controversial $1.7 billion slush fund proposed by the Trump administration for militia groups such as the Proud Boys and other neo-Nazis.
She unleashed a barrage of history, berating the hypocrisy of democracy, particularly the current manifestation.
“Now, we’re not talking about taxpayer dollars as we are in that slush fund,” Crockett said, “but you’re telling me the $2 billion in the same country that … still hasn’t thought that reparations made sense for Black folk in this country, but at the same time, they’ve decided that people that are in organizations that are absolutely white supremacy organizations should get our tax dollars because they decided to tear apart or attempt to tear apart our democracy. They are being rewarded.”
We certainly agree with Crockett. If the slush fund is placed in a historical context, it resembles a provision enacted after the Civil War to provide restitution to former slaveholders. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill emancipating enslaved people in Washington. Then, to pacify the slaveowners, the District of Columbia Emancipation Act paid those loyal to the Union up to $300 for every enslaved person freed. In effect, the slaveowners received reparations, and African Americans were then, and continue to be, deprived.
Would we have been better off joining forces with the Confederacy and getting paid for defying the Union? No, but it’s a surrealistic idea for sure. In this Orwellian age, where truth is manipulated daily, when injustice is justice, and reprobates can be rewarded, all bets are off.
