Controversial Fox News host Jesse Watters is at the center of a growing backlash over outrageous racist claims about Black people amid wider anger over the U.S. Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act, suggesting African-Americans should have more children if they want additional congressional representation.
“I did some research on the Blacks, as Judge Jeanine would so eloquently say, and the solution to Hakeem’s problem, this gay Obama, is baby-making,” Watters stunningly said on the cable show “The Five” as other panelists laughed in the background. He was referring to the highest-ranking Black member in Congress, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
“Blacks for 150 years have only represented 10 to 15 percent of the American population. Ok? That’s not that much, so if they want to have more seats, they gotta get in between the sheets,” Watters stunningly added in a vulgar manner, seemingly joking about GOP redistricting efforts in Southern states.
Social media exploded in rage over Watters’ blatantly racist comments.
“Another mediocre white man speaking on the black experience, what a fleeb, that mug has a punchable face,” Threads user Ira Hardin noted.
Another agreed, “He’s a special kind of stupid, some kind of klanning going on.”
Others wondered if Watters would have the courage to say that to an African American’s face.
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“Dare him to actually say that to black people.”
This Threads user summed it up pretty concisely, “When they said free speech, this is what they meant. Laughing and taunting and mocking black people openly. Their obsession and insecurity continues for the rational world to see.”
Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana have each dismantled a Black majority voting district, leaving one intact in each state. Tennessee has splintered a Black Democratic stronghold into three sprawling districts in an obvious racial gerrymander, according to U.S. News and World Report.
On Monday, South Carolina joined those Southern states in their gerrymander efforts with a special session of its legislature to redraw the district of 17-term Democratic congressman Jim Clyburn, the only African-American among the Palmetto State’s seven delegates in the House of Representatives.
Republican-controlled Texas and Florida already began redrawing districts to give the GOP an edge before the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, and Georgia has called a special June session of the Legislature to redraw maps for the 2028 election.
Most of this followed the High Court’s 6-3 decision on April 29 in Louisiana v. Callais. The court ruled Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map with a second majority-Black district to correct for racial disparities was illegal and, in effect, an unconstitutional gerrymander, Harvard Kennedy School reported, and that states do not have to implement majority-Black districts under the Voting Rights Act.
The decision severely limits the use of Section 2 of the VRA, which allowed and sometimes required the creation of majority-Black districts for equal representation, a major way Black and Latino lawmakers have been elected to office, Harvard reported.
Most estimates reveal as many as 140 majority-minority districts, and as many as a third of current Black and Latino lawmakers are at risk of losing their seats.
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