Rep. Jasmine Crockett from Texas used her time last month at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center to call out the elephant in the room, pointing directly at her Republican colleagues before walking them through what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. actually said about racism.
The Democratic congresswoman didn’t ease into it. “The vast majority of the people on that side of the aisle, and for those of you that are at home, let me tell you. When I say that side of the aisle, I’m talking about the Republicans,” she said in the June 9 hearing.
Then she dropped the bomb.
“The vast majority of them are white men. White men are lecturing people of color.”
With no hesitation, she turned her attention to Dr. Alveda King, an MLK niece who had been invited by the Republicans as a star witness. Crockett wasn’t having it.
“You’ve yet to have MLK the third come in here. You’ve yet to have Doctor Bernice King, the ones that were actually raised by Doctor King,” she said, adding that Republicans were using the King name specifically to create confusion among viewers watching at home.
She then read directly from King’s own words to make her point. “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race,” she quoted from his 1963 book “Why We Can’t Wait.”
She followed with lines from his 1967 speech The Other America, starting with this one: “Racism is evil because its ultimate logic is genocide.”
Her rip into the Republicans didn’t stop there, as she challenged what they defined as a ‘hate organization.’
“Y’all don’t seem like y’all even understand what a hate organization is, so I went to Google to help you out,” she said. “A hate group is an organized group whose beliefs, practices and primary purpose are centered on advocating malice, hostility or violence towards people based on their immutable characteristics race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or disability.”
Crockett then turned to Georgetown Law Professor Mary McCord, walking her through a rapid-fire quiz on hate speech, quoting Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Each quote, from doubting a Black pilot’s qualifications to calling the Civil Rights Act “a huge mistake,” McCord confirmed reflected racism or racial stereotyping without hesitation.
“These all just happen to be comments from the fearless leader of Turning Point USA,” Crockett said. “So I could see where SPLC was going.”
She closed by noting the irony of Republicans holding hearings on SPLC fraud while refusing to pursue Epstein defendants. “I have still yet to see an indictment on any Epstein defendant,” she said. “But OK.”
