A white Republican legislator who's seeking to ban diversity programs in Kentucky schools told a mostly Black audience that her father had been a slave.
State Rep. Jennifer Decker (R-Waddy), who sponsored a bill to eliminate educational opportunities and programs based on race, went before the Shelbyville Area NAACP a week and half ago and made a startling claim during a question-and-answer session, when someone asked if her family had played a role in the slave trade, reported the Courier-Journal.
“My father was born on a dirt farm in Lincoln County," said Decker, a 68-year-old attorney. "His mother was the illegitimate daughter of a very prominent person who then was kind enough to allow them to work for him as slaves. So, if you’re asking, did we own slaves? My father was a slave, just to a white man and he was white."
Decker's father was a white preacher born sometime around 1933, which was 68 years after the 13th Amendment ended slavery.
"It was a moment that, in many ways, proved how badly diversity, equity and inclusion programs – this year’s chosen bogeyman of Kentucky’s right-wing politicians – are needed in Kentucky’s schools," wrote columnist Joseph Gerth.
"Such diversity programs weren’t around when Decker was in school," Gerth added. "If they had been, she might have learned that few white people in America, short of those who have been trafficked for sex, should ever claim something like that. It’s deeply offensive to those who are descendants of actual slaves to hear a white person claim that they are a descendent of a slave."
The columnist asked Decker to clarify her comments on slavery, but she kept repeating the word "irrelevant," which Gerth said only confused him more, so he asked whether slavery was irrelevant.
“Well, it’s not irrelevant,” Decker said. “No. It’s not irrelevant what slavery is, but it’s shifting the focus from what we’re talking about.”
Gerth again asked her to clarify what she meant by claiming her white father had been a slave in the middle of the 20th Century, and he said her answer seemed to indicate his family had actually been tenant farmers.
“Well, my father was born into poverty," she said. "There was a very influential man who allowed them property and then they worked on it."
Decker said her father's family had not been paid for their labor, and she admitted when pressed that she "probably overstated" her claim.
"Was I saying that it was kidnapping and abuse the same as the slaves? No," Decker said. “He was a child and his family all worked there."
Gerth admitted he was left unsatisfied with the legislator's explanation.
"So, Decker’s father was forced by his parents to do chores? And that was what made him a 'slave?'" Gerth wrote. "I suppose any of us who washed dishes, cut grass or took out the garbage were 'slaves' according to Decker's definition."
