Speaking to reporters this Thursday, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) addressed her recent dust-up with Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) that took place on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, saying she felt threatened by the encounter.
“What concerns me about Jamaal Bowman is he has a history of aggression, not just towards others but towards me in particular,” Greene said, “and I’m very concerned about it.”
In an attempt to establish a pattern, Greene pointed to another incident with Bowman, when he shouted at her as she departed a New York City protest in support of former President Trump before he appeared for an arraignment.
She also mentioned an incident when Bowman got in the face of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) over gun control -- an incident in which Massie claims Bowman physically pushed him.
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But Greene also made another accusation.
“I will tell you what’s on video is Jamaal Bowman shouting at the top of his lungs, cursing, calling me a horrible — calling me a white supremacist, which I take great offense to,” she said. “That’s like calling a person of color the n-word, which should never happen. Calling me a white supremacist is equal to that. That is wrong.”
In an op-ed for The Washington Post this Thursday, Philip Bump says that Greene's comparison is "not how the n-word works."
"That word is simply used to describe people based on skin color. It is a disparagement not of what they choose to espouse but of a physical characteristic they don’t control," Bump writes. "What’s more, it’s an attack based solely on that characteristic and the speaker’s belief that this characteristic is somehow worthy of mockery or diminishment."
"This is a long way of saying that using the n-word as a pejorative is inherently racist, a disparagement of millions of people," Bump adds. "Calling someone 'white supremacist' is not. Even when used as an unfair attack, it’s specific to that person, not to everyone like them."
Read the full op-ed over at The Washington Post.
