The Republican congresswoman who drew attention at a congressional hearing for saying Hunter Biden is the “epitome of white privilege” was immediately called out for her apparent duplicity regarding her work in civil rights and for invoking the phrase “white privilege” in bad taste.
Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina was the one Republican congressional member who called for President Joe Biden‘s son’s immediate arrest after he made a surprise appearance at a House Oversight and Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday where Republicans planned to hold him in contempt of Congress. This was after Biden skipped out on a closed-door deposition intended to be part of an impeachment inquiry into his father.
Not only did Mace demand his arrest, but he pointedly called Biden the “epitome of white privilege” for ignoring the summons to the deposition.
As the hearing went on, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas ended up circling back to Mace’s “white privilege” comments, saying, “It was a spit in the face, at least of mine as a Black woman, for you to talk about what white privilege looks like, especially from that side of the aisle. Y’all don’t know what white privilege looks like,” the two-term Democrat added.
Mace worked to defend herself against Crockett’s comments by touting her former position as the ranking member of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee while talking about Black-White relations in her district.
“I take great pride as a white female Republican to address the inadequacies in our country. I come from a district where rich and poor is literally Black and white, Black versus white on most days,” Mace remarked.
She went on to talk about the number of inmate deaths in the largest jail in her district, how Black men are killed by police, the financial standing of white voters in her district, and prominent Black figures like Joseph Rainey and Harriet Tubman.
However, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York threw Mace’s comments back in her face and exposed the hypocrisy behind her speech and her work on the Civil Rights Subcommittee.
“I think it’s so exemplary of the point that [Mace] also oversaw the elimination of the Civil Rights Subcommittee on this committee, which really kind of gives the whole game away,” Ocasio-Cortez stated. “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, women, people of color, people that just need to see their due process and civil liberties protected in this country.”
The Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which focused on voting rights, criminal justice reform, freedom of assembly, and equal employment, was disbanded last year by the Republican-controlled House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
Before its dissolution, Ocasio-Cortez served as vice chair of the subcommittee. Mace had been appointed its ranking minority member in 2021.
Mace was first elected to the U.S. House to represent South Carolina’s 1st District, which stretches from Charleston to Hilton Head Island, after defeating Joe Cunningham by just one point in 2020. Cunningham was the first Democrat in four decades to represent that district after winning the congressional election in 2018.
In 2022, the year before Mace was re-elected, state lawmakers redrew congressional district lines that moved thousands of Black voters out of her district while making room for more inland white voters.
According to the New York Times, 62 percent of Charleston County’s Black voters — which amounts to 30,000 voters — were moved to South Carolina’s majority-Black 6th District, which has been represented by Rep. James Clyburn, a Black Democrat, for 30 years.
Thanks to that new map, Mace handily won re-election in 2022 by 14 points.
However, a three-judge panel who reviewed the new lines called the voter shifts a “stark racial gerrymander” and ruled that the map was unconstitutional, noting that the displacement of the thousands of voters in Charleston ultimately weakened Black voters’ power in the congressional first district.
They ordered legislators to redraw the map with a particular focus on District 1. However, the Supreme Court signaled last year that they might preserve the map ahead of the 2024 elections, which could keep Mace in Congress if she would be re-elected again.
Republicans hold control over the U.S. House of Representatives by a slim margin, meaning the balance of power could easily shift to Democrats in the upcoming elections if just a handful of seats shift sides.
