Source: Pacific Press / Getty
Here’s a simple truth: Black women can’t exist in the world of politics without consistently being forced to grapple against a mountain of misogynoir throughout their careers and lives. It doesn’t matter how much they’ve accomplished in their professional and educational lives. It doesn’t matter how deep their resumes are. The second a Black woman in the political arena—or any position of power and influence, for that matter—says or does anything that rubs the white conservative MAGA world the wrong way, she is immediately reduced to every stereotype associated with her race and gender. It literally never fails. Professional Black women put up with racist and perpetually fake-fragile white people who don’t think they should be where they are or have what they’ve earned throughout their lives, and, apparently, even in death.
Last Friday, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) died after battling pancreatic cancer. Before she passed, Jackson Lee tweeted an observation about Donald Trump that generally everyone who isn’t a fact-averse Trump-humping cultist has made about the former president: he’s a compulsive liar who rambles incomprehensibly and should not be voted in to get his Tang-flavored honey-do-do all over the Oval Office furniture again.
The GOP Officially Has No Basic Human Decency
“I have no idea what Donald Trump was talking about last night,” Jackson Lee tweeted in reference to Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention, which everyone who doesn’t bathe in Trump’s butt shavings instead of soap criticized as a lengthy display of delusion and easily debunkable lies. “For more than an hour, he rambled and lied. He is unfit for the Presidency! Now, my friends, is the time to focus on beating him and his Project 2025 monstrosity. Enough is enough!”
Laura Loomer, a far-right political activist who was one the Republican nominee to represent Florida’s 21st congressional district in the state House before losing to Democrat Lois Frankel, took issue with Lee’s tweet and responded by calling the late legislator a “ghetto b*tch.”
“Even on her death bed, this ghetto b*tch couldn’t keep President Trump’s name out of her disgusting mouth. I’d say rest in peace, but we all know lying democrats who have destroyed our country are going to hell,” Loomer wrote.
“Sheila Jackson Lee will be remembered as a destructive force in America and one of the most low IQ members of Congress in the history of our nation. Today she died. Instead of spending her final moments with her family, she was talking shit about Trump on X and spewing more lies. She won’t be missed. But, I’m sure she will still be voting Democrat this November. Good riddance!”
Still Winning Despite Alabaster America
Source: Kent Nishimura / Getty
Before serving in Congress for three decades, Jackson Lee was a graduate of Yale University and the University of Virginia Law School. She also served as a municipal judge before running for office and was part of the American delegation to the 2001 World Conference on Racism in South Africa. Her Black excellence has been observed on multiple continents, and that’s how she’ll be remembered. The only people who will remember her as a “ghetto b*tch” or “low-IQ”—which has long been among white nationalist conservatives favorite insults to lob at Black politicians—are MAGAts who shower bi-monthly and think the District of Columbia is a foreign land run by Mexicans.
Again, Loomer calling Jackson Lee “ghetto” is just par for the white supremacist course at this point.
The color-redacted members of the MAGA world called Rep. Jasmine Crockett “ghetto” for calling Marjorie Taylor Greene a “bleach blonde, bad built, butch body,” which she only did in response to Greene arbitrarily coming for her eyelashes during a House session—a thing Greene was curiously not called “ghetto” for.
Despite Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson‘s extensive legal history, her appointment to the SCOTUS was constantly mired by pigment-deficient politicians and pundits who blindly questioned her qualifications.
Alabaster America was already calling Vice President Kamala Harris a “DEI hire” before she became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president amid President Joe Biden’s decision to step down—despite the fact that she was appointed by the president to a position for which there is no existing diversity, equity and inclusion program. We can expect a lot more of that from now until November is she is selected as the Democratic nominee.
Another Day, Another White Supremacist Moment
Again, it really doesn’t matter how educated these women are or how much they’ve accomplished. The same people who are on a warpath to end DEI in America will continue to prove why diversity initiatives are necessary in the first place.
Before Trump was president, he didn’t have a fraction of the credentials Jackson Lee had (or that of Harris and Brown Jackson), and the same can be said for Loomer the Loser, who called Jackson Lee a “Lying Democrat” while perpetuating the thoroughly debunked lies Trump has told and keeps telling. But they’re not “ghetto” no matter what they say and do because they’re white.
Black people used to lament that “Black people have to work twice as hard as white people just to get half as far,” but the real truth is, even if Black people, especially Black women, have done the work, they’ll still be reduced to a stereotype.
It’s just the way white privilege and white supremacy work—simple as that.
See More:
Grief, Grace & Gratitude: The Passing Of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee
Women’s History Month: The Unique Challenges Faced By Black Women In The Fight For Equality
