A Black Republican congressman excoriated Democrats and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for allegedly perpetuating racist tropes he said had long faded while recounting how his father endured true bigotry in ways far worse than what Americans experience today.
\nRep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, joined a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday examining the role the SPLC allegedly played in \u201cdistorting civil rights policy\u201d by funneling money to racist and extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and whether that funding elevated extremist threats in America.
\nHunt began his remarks by noting the idea du jour in the \u201cDemocrat hive\u201d is that \u201cJim Crow 2.0 is alive and well in America\u201d as he sat beside a split image of a Black man standing near a \u201cColored\u201d sign and a person handing over identification to poll workers.
\n\u201cI\u2019m sure some of the SPLC\u2019s actions have helped them make this argument,\u201d he said before turning to retired Vanderbilt law and political science professor Carol Swain \u2014 who is also Black \u2014 and asking her if she experienced any true \u201cJim Crow\u201d treatment when she last voted in Tennessee.
\nPATEL, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST RIP SPLC AFTER DOJ ALLEGES GROUP FUNDED THE \u2018VILLAINS\u2019 THEY CLAIMED TO FIGHT<\/p>\n
\u201cWere you intimidated in any way with baseball bats, fire hoses or dogs?\u201d Hunt asked, as Swain replied that the only nervousness she felt was when asking for a Republican ballot in a Democrat-heavy precinct.
\nHunt thanked Swain for her testimony and turned to the contrasting image beside him.
\n\u201cFor all my Democrat colleagues, everyone on the left screaming \u2018Jim Crow 2.0\u2019 ad infinitum \u2014 let\u2019s take a moment to revisit what actual Jim Crow was. Jim Crow was a time when Black Americans could not sit in classrooms with White Americans. It was colored-only water fountains; it was beatings in the streets; it was lynchings.\u201d
\nHunt said true Jim Crow was when his father had to go to the back door of restaurants growing up in New Orleans in order to get a sandwich because he could not go in the front like Whites.
\n\u201cThat is precisely why it is so offensive to compare that era of legalized discrimination and racial terror to showing a photo ID at the voting booth.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd it is offensive that\u2026 groups like these manufacture faux hate,\u201d Hunt said of the SPLC.
\nWHITE HOUSE KNOCKS CHUCK SCHUMER OVER JIM CROW CLAIM: \u2018PROFESSIONAL GASLIGHTER\u2019
\nDuring the hearing, which did not feature the SPLC itself, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights CEO Maya Wiley defended the group, saying attacks from Republicans are \u201cnothing more than part of a larger, broader, coordinated attack on civil rights organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it was his turn to speak, Hunt alleged that Democrats who tout the phrase \u201cJim Crow 2.0\u201d to condemn political policies they disagree with do so because it is the only way they can stay relevant.
\n\u201cThe Democrat Party survives on manufacturing grievance. Democrats invoke the pain of the past because they have nothing to offer for the present. They don\u2019t want an honest debate. They want emotional manipulation. They want outrage. They want division, as evidenced by our discussion in this very hearing today.\u201d
\nHunt said that he and the other sitting Black Republicans in the House \u2014 Reps. Burgess Owens of Utah, John James of Michigan and Byron Donalds of Florida \u2014 all represent White-majority districts, which he said disproves notions from the left on the matter.
\n\u201cNobody cares about what we look like. We are being judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character because we\u2019ve come a long way from this,\u201d he said, pointing to another split image of a segregation-era scene transposed next to a voting scene.
\n\u201cI want to continue on the path that America has set forth in the name of Jesus Christ,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThis is not 1960 anymore, it\u2019s 2026. And the fact that groups like these are willing to stroke the flames of hate by funding the KKK.\u201d
\nHe then yielded back to Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
\nSeveral recent election integrity and related policies enacted by Republicans at the state and federal level have been accused of being newfound Jim Crow roadblocks for minorities.
\nSCHUMER FACES BACKLASH AFTER CALLING SAVE ACT \u2018JIM CROW\u2019 DESPITE PREVIOUS ALLEGATION FALLING FLAT<\/p>\n
The most memorable is likely Georgia\u2019s Election Integrity Act, in which Democrats and Major League Baseball sought boycotts of Atlanta for the legislature passing such a bill.
\nAfter a 1960s-era segregationist tenor failed to materialize, proponents of such policies, including Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, noted the Democratic din suddenly dissipated.
\n\u201cThese voices have gone strangely silent now that their dire predictions have proved false. Two weeks ago, Georgia held its first election primaries since the new election law took effect, and far from \u2018suppressing\u2019 the vote, there was record turnout,\u201d Wicker said in a 2022 statement.
\nSCHUMER DOUBLES DOWN ON GOP VOTING BILL \u2018JIM CROW 2.0\u2019 DESPITE DEMOCRATIC VOTER SUPPORT<\/p>\n
\u201cEarly voting increased nearly threefold from 2018 and more than doubled from 2020, a presidential election year. Minority early voting soared as well, with African American voters casting over 100,000 more early ballots than in 2018. All of this must have come as a surprise to voters who had been fed misinformation,\u201d Wicker added.
\nAt the hearing, ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., however, defended SPLC\u2019s \u201cinformant program\u201d at issue, which he said shared information about racially charged terror plots with law enforcement and added that he has seen no proof the group\u2019s donors were being deceived.
\n\u201cWhere is the fraud? Where are their lawsuits?\u201d he asked.
\nThe fact the phrase Jim Crow 2.0 continues to be bandied about shows that the divisions cited by Hunt still resonate in some political corners, portending uncertainty into the future on the matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"