WATCH: Wesley Hunt flips script on Dems' 'Jim Crow 2.0' attacks amid heated SPLC racism hearing
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.
Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, joined a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday examining the role the SPLC allegedly played in "distorting civil rights policy" by funneling money to racist and extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and whether that funding elevated extremist threats in America.
Hunt began his remarks by noting the idea du jour in the "Democrat hive" is that "Jim Crow 2.0 is alive and well in America" as he sat beside a split image of a Black man standing near a "Colored" sign and a person handing over identification to poll workers.
"I’m sure some of the SPLC’s actions have helped them make this argument," he said before turning to retired Vanderbilt law and political science professor Carol Swain — who is also Black — and asking her if she experienced any true "Jim Crow" treatment when she last voted in Tennessee.
"Were you intimidated in any way with baseball bats, fire hoses or dogs?" Hunt asked, as Swain replied that the only nervousness she felt was when asking for a Republican ballot in a Democrat-heavy precinct.
Hunt thanked Swain for her testimony and turned to the contrasting image beside him.
"For all my Democrat colleagues, everyone on the left screaming ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ ad infinitum — let's 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."
Hunt 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.
"That 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."
"And it is offensive that… groups like these manufacture faux hate," Hunt said of the SPLC.
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During 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 "nothing more than part of a larger, broader, coordinated attack on civil rights organizations."
When it was his turn to speak, Hunt alleged that Democrats who tout the phrase "Jim Crow 2.0" to condemn political policies they disagree with do so because it is the only way they can stay relevant.
"The Democrat Party survives on manufacturing grievance. Democrats invoke the pain of the past because they have nothing to offer for the present. They don't want an honest debate. They want emotional manipulation. They want outrage. They want division, as evidenced by our discussion in this very hearing today."
Hunt said that he and the other sitting Black Republicans in the House — Reps. Burgess Owens of Utah, John James of Michigan and Byron Donalds of Florida — all represent White-majority districts, which he said disproves notions from the left on the matter.
"Nobody 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've come a long way from this," he said, pointing to another split image of a segregation-era scene transposed next to a voting scene.
"I want to continue on the path that America has set forth in the name of Jesus Christ," he said.
"This is not 1960 anymore, it's 2026. And the fact that groups like these are willing to stroke the flames of hate by funding the KKK."
He then yielded back to Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
Several 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.
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The most memorable is likely Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, in which Democrats and Major League Baseball sought boycotts of Atlanta for the legislature passing such a bill.
After a 1960s-era segregationist tenor failed to materialize, proponents of such policies, including Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, noted the Democratic din suddenly dissipated.
"These 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 ‘suppressing’ the vote, there was record turnout," Wicker said in a 2022 statement.
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"Early 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," Wicker added.
At the hearing, ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., however, defended SPLC's "informant program" 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's donors were being deceived.
"Where is the fraud? Where are their lawsuits?" he asked.
The 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.