During a House Oversight Committee on May 16th, 2024, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene attacked the appearance of freshman Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett, saying that her “fake eyelashes were messing up her reading.” In response, Crockett posed a hypothetical: “If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blond, bad built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”
In official video footage of the incident, the camera pans to Crockett, who sports a knowing smirk, before landing on Representative Jamie Raskin, who tries (and fails) to suppress his laughter.
Viral clips promptly circulated, and Representative Crockett made various media appearances, standing by the decorum of her “only hypothetical” insult.
Moments like these in modern American politics are more frequent than ever–we live in the era of the congressional screaming match, of large props during congressional hearings and angry outbursts punctuated by the sound of a gavel.
However, this exchange didn’t just die down–it prompted the interruption of Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who repeatedly said that Crockett was “out of control” and must “calm down.” Her words were racial dog whistles, painting Crockett as irrational and angry despite her calm manner and the context of her response, forcing her neatly into the stereotype of the “angry Black woman.”
As we enter a second Trump presidency backed by a Republican-controlled Congress, there’s much focus and worry about the racist policies his administration might sponsor. From stripping DEI to fueling anti-immigration sentiment, the Trump presidency certainly poses many threats, but it’s equally important to look inward. Both historically and currently, racism has stained the internal dynamics of Congress–and if racism permeates the institutions that make laws, then the policy outcomes are hardly surprising.
Congressional representation for oppressed groups has not been an easy road. The first Black members of Congress, Representative Joseph Rainey (R-SC) and Senator Hiram Revels (R-MS), weren’t elected or seated respectively until 1870, nearly a century after the country’s founding. That shaky foundation set the stage for the following 150 years of racial politics in Congress.
Unsurprisingly, the first Black members to enter Congress did not signify a new age of racial harmony in the halls of the United States government. Their tenure was symbolic of the radical (yet ultimately temporary) reforms of the Radical Reconstruction period, which gave suffrage to Black men–they were allowed little power once inside the Capitol. Joseph Rainey worked towards passing civil rights legislation and funding public schools, though his legislative record was limited. One of his most substantial contributions was advocating for the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was eventually signed into law by President Grant. He was especially known for giving impassioned speeches throughout his tenure. While he served, he was often a target of death threats, and constantly feared racial violence. Revels also worked to advance the interests of Black Americans, but from the start his very right to serve in Congress was questioned using Dred Scott to undermine his citizenship. Throughout his time in Congress, he advocated strongly for recovery and improvement in his home state of Mississippi, but he was soon out of office as the term of the seat he was filling ran out. Through the following decades, the end of Radical Reconstruction and the re-intensification of segregation and disenfranchisement effectively eliminated Black Americans from public office.
Between 1887 and 1901, there were only five Black members of Congress, and they had very limited power in an institution that forced them away from leadership and good committee assignments. After 1901, it was another 28 years before a Black American served in Congress, and another 72 years until a Black American served in Congress representing the South.
When Black Americans began returning to Congress in 1929, they were entering a workplace that had spent years ignoring or fighting against any form of civil rights. However, the Second Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to northern states, which spanned the 1940s to the 1970s, increased Black political power, as they could freely vote and helped build up local chapters of the NAACP. While there were plenty of problems in the North, there was still a greater sense of political enfranchisement, and the Great Migration arguably helped spur the Civil Rights Movement. As the Civil Rights Movement grew over the following decades, and Black congresspeople accrued more power within the Capitol, they still only constituted a small minority. However, many important figures emerged in Congress during this time period.
In 1945, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. entered Congress as the first Black American to be elected from New York. Over his decades spent in Congress, Powell rose in the ranks of the Democratic Party, becoming one of its most prominent figures. He worked tirelessly for civil rights causes, especially after assuming chairmanship of the Education and Labor Committee. Within Congress, as one of only two black Congressmen until 1955, Powell was often at odds with Southern segregationists and discriminatory practices within the Capitol.
Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman to be elected to Congress in 1968, and later became the first Black woman to seek the presidential nomination from either of the two major political parties. While in Congress, she introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation, and fought strongly for racial and gender equality. She also worked to expand programs for low-income and working-class Americans, while rising in the ranks of the Democratic caucus.
In a post-Civil Rights Movement America, Black representation in Congress reached new highs. The vast majority of all Black congresspeople have served since 1970. As numbers swelled, the Congressional Black Caucus formed in 1971, which has worked to advance the interests of Black Americans ever since. Since then, Black members of Congress have finally obtained committee Chair positions and party leadership positions.
In 1972, two Southern Black representatives, Andrew Jackson Young Jr. (D-GA) and Barbara Jordan (D-TX) finally broke the decades-long streak of no Black southerners serving in Congress after winning their congressional races. Andrew Jackson Young Jr. was an important part of the Civil Rights Movement, serving as a senior aide to Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He decided to run for office to attempt to make change from inside the political system rather than from outside, and while he lost in 1970, he won in 1972 on a campaign that focused on public education. Once in government, he advocated liberal policies at home and abroad, fighting against government contracts with foreign companies practicing discrimination, supporting wage increases for the working class, and advocating for voting rights. When Jimmy Carter took the presidency, Young resigned from Congress to become U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations where he advocated Carter’s human rights positions, and later became mayor of Atlanta. Through these positions, Young cemented his legacy–his story contrasts with how inner congressional politics changed overtime, as he was able to accrue power, and often worked across the aisle while in Congress. Jordan similarly left an impact, becoming chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, delivering a memorable opening statement at the Nixon impeachment hearings, and advocating expansion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
However, increased representation has still left Congress far from racial harmony. While there may be more representation than ever, Congress still fails to reflect the diversity of the American populace by a noticeable margin.
Proportionally, White Americans make up a larger share of Congress than of the U.S. population by 16 percentage points, and as the racial diversity of the U.S. continues to increase, it’s uncertain that the racial makeup of Congress will change to match that reality.
Additionally, representation in congressional membership isn’t everything.
In 2024, Dr. James R. Jones published a book called The Last Plantation: Racism and Resistance in the Halls of Congress, based in part on his three years serving as a congressional intern in the early 2000s. His insight is damning–his experiences point out that many lawmakers, especially white ones, had exclusively white offices. Dr. Jones believes that “The unequal racial makeup of our congressional staff is one of the most important problems subverting our multiracial democracy,” and leads to a Congress that “operates as an inequality regime.” These are alarming claims when paired with the amount of policy that staffers directly shape. One of the big examples he points out is that even though federal anti-workplace discrimination legislation gained traction in the 1960s, Congress has historically been exempt from those laws, and not tracked or reported its hiring data. To change the congressional workplace, and thus change how Congress operates internally, these data are crucial. Since publishing his findings, Senate Democrats have begun reporting data, but Republicans have not–it’s an improvement, but a fundamentally incomplete one. Additionally, narrowing in on senior staffers, representation for people of color has increased only marginally in recent years, from 7 percent in 2015 to 11 in 2024.
Through interviewing primarily Black staffers, Jones unveils a picture of underrepresentation in a stifling and unchanging workplace–Congress still has a lot of internal work to do in increasing diversity to change that atmosphere.
With the context of historical and contemporary Black existence in Congress, we return to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jasmine Crockett in the House Oversight Committee. Greene’s racist remark about Crockett’s eyelashes and the subsequent response is surrounded by a plethora of similar situations that have taken place in Congress in the contemporary era.
In January of 2024, Representative Barbara Lee shared an anecdote during a CNN interview. When trying to enter the Capitol to vote, Representative Lee was stopped by a white man and asked “Whose pin did you steal?” in regards to the pin that denoted her as a member of Congress. That same year, Representative Greene “accidentally” referred to Somali Representative Ilhan Omar as “Representative Ilhan Omar of Somalia.” Representative Tony Nehls called the Black husband of Representative Cori Bush a “thug,” and said that the death threats Bush had received were because she was “so loud all the time.” During the TikTok hearing, Senator Tom Cotton repeatedly asked Singaporean TikTok CEO Shou Chew if he was Chinese or connected to the Chinese government, despite repeated reminders of his nationality.
These moments can be explosive or subtle, widely publicized or kept in secret–but no matter what, they are prevalent, recurrent, and concerning. They speak to the long history of racism and lack of representation in Congress and show how even if representation has improved, Congress still suffers from deeply entrenched racism that creates a hostile work environment for its non-white members.
While moments like the Crockett-Greene or Cotton-Chew exchanges may go viral and spawn thousands of hours of social media content, they cannot be taken as jokes. When the institution refuses to effectively reprimand its own for blatant racism, the problem is undeniably profound.
