Congressman Mondaire Jones has been representing the people of the 17th District for less than 100 days. The district includes most of Northern Westchester County and all of Rockland County, two of the more affluent suburbs of New York City.
On April 22, during a House debate over whether Washington DC should become the 51st US State, Rep. Jones, speaking in support of the bill said, “I have had enough of my colleagues’ racist insinuation that somehow the people of D.C. are incapable or even unworthy of our Democracy. One Senate Republican said that D.C. wouldn’t be a ‘well rounded working class state.’ I had no idea there were so many syllables in the word white.”
Jones’ other comment made the national newswires. “One of my House Republican colleagues said that D.C. shouldn’t be a state because the District doesn’t have a landfill. My goodness, with all the racist trash my colleagues have brought to this debate I can see why they’re worried about having a place to put it.”
Progressive democratic groups supported Jones. The Leadership Conference tweeted, “WATCH: Congressman @MondaireJones just spoke truth to power on the House floor about why some lawmakers oppose #DCStatehood. Republicans forced him to withdraw his words, but the truth remains: Race is a critical factor in the long-term denial of rights for DC residents. Enough.”
Republicans on the House floor immediately objected to Jones’ comments and asked that they be withdrawn from the record. Jones consented to the request and finished his speech on the floor. “The truth is there is no good faith argument for disenfranchising more than 700,000 people, most of whom are people of color. These desperate objections are about fear,” he said, “Fear that in D.C. their white supremacist politics will no longer play, fear that soon enough white supremacist politics won’t work anywhere in America. Fear that if they don’t rid our democracy, they will not win. Today Democrats are standing up for a multi-racial democracy to democratize all 51 states in this country.”
The legislation to create DC Statehood, H.R. passed by a vote of 216-208. Even though it has the support of President Joe Biden, it is not expected to pass the US Senate and become law.
Two days after his comments on the House floor, Rep. Jones was a guest on CNN’s Michael Smerconish show, and when given a chance to walk back his comments, Jones did nothing of the sort.
Q-Smerconish–Is it necessarily racist to oppose DC Statehood?
A-Jones -“In the case of the debate today, it is. When you listen to the explanaitons set forth by my republican colleagues, you can see quite clearly that they are not offered in good faith. …””If you uphold systems of White supremacy — even if you do not consider yourself to be racist — you are engaging in racist activity. There are 700,000 people in the District of Columbia, more than in the state of Wyoming and Vermont and so the idea that we would disenfranchise those people, that we would tax them without representation..it is quite a sinister thing.”
“The difference between those two states (Wyoming and Vermont), aside from the fact that they have fewer people than in Washington D.C., is that they are overwhelmingly White states. This is an issue of racial justice in addition to being an issue of democracy. We must stop disenfranchising people of color in this country.”
46% of Washington DC population is black, according to 2019 Census estimates.
Republican Congressman Andy Harris, who made the motiion on the House floor for Jones to remove his comments from the record, released a statement after the vote, “Especially at a time of growing discord, to insinuate outright racial animosity by Republican members of Congress during legitimate debate about the merits and constitutionality of admitting the District of Columbia as a state is unbecoming of a representative and violates the rules of the House. Mr. Jones thankfully realized his words were inappropriate and accepted the removal of the words from the record.”
The New York City suburbs that Rep. Jones now represents has clearly moved to the left, and started as a backlash to the eleciton of former President Donald Trump in the local elections of 2017. The question that may soon be asked of Congressman Jones is, are his comments and stances in Washington supported by a majority of democrats in his district?
