Jasmine Crockett and the Ghettoization of Political Discourse

She speaks in slang not to connect, but because she’s been taught that’s all black America can understand.

By now, many Americans have heard of Jasmine Crockett—not because of her ideas, but because of her insults. Her latest gaffe, referring to Texas Governor Greg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels,” made headlines for its tastelessness. But the greater offense lies not in her crass language toward a political opponent but in the way she deliberately dumbs down her public persona—specifically for black audiences.

Jasmine Crockett is not a clown putting on a show. She’s not selling something she doesn’t believe in. That would be easier to explain.

No—what makes her behavior far more concerning is that it’s not an act. It’s sincere.

Despite being raised in the suburbs, educated in private school, and trained as a lawyer, Crockett speaks to black audiences as if they’re incapable of understanding plain English. She doesn't simply advocate for policies. She doesn’t just present facts. Everything she communicates is filtered through a forced, exaggerated, hyper-stylized “ghetto” effect—because she believes that’s what black people need in order to understand or connect with anything.

And she believes that because that’s what she was taught—by white liberals.

This is the part no one wants to talk about: the influence white liberalism has on how young, educated black professionals end up viewing their own community.

It’s not just pattern matching, linguistic convergence, or accent mirroring. What Jasmine Crockett engages in is not a subconscious adaptation to the people she speaks to—it is a deliberate and learned speech strategy based on a deeply held, though unspoken, belief: that black Americans are only reachable through street vernacular and attitude. That logic and policy are too dry. That seriousness is too "white." So instead of saying, "Here is the legislation I support, and here are the outcomes it will create," she opts for, "We 'bout to go in on this thang, OKAYYY?"

Jasmine Crockett didn’t grow up in the hood. But she spent her formative years around white Democrats—teachers, donors, mentors, professors—who believe, deep down, that black Americans are intellectually and emotionally deficient. These are the same people who oppose voter ID laws not on principle but because they genuinely think black people are too disorganized to keep track of identification. They support affirmative action not because they believe in fairness but because they don’t think black students can compete without shortcuts. They make excuses for riots because they assume black people can’t control their tempers.

And when a black woman like Crockett spends enough time in that world, she absorbs it. She internalizes it.

She learns that speaking seriously, plainly, and confidently isn’t “relatable” to black folks. She learns that everything must be styled, slangified, dumbed down, and wrapped in attitude—because she has been taught to see black Americans the same way her white liberal mentors do: as helpless, emotionally volatile children who can’t be reached with normal communication.

This isn’t marketing. It’s not an act. It’s indoctrination.

It’s a warped form of racial solidarity forged in guilt and condescension. And it produces leaders who believe their people are beneath the very standards they themselves have met in their own lives.

It is no accident that Crockett doesn’t say, “Here’s a bill I support because it will lower crime and increase opportunity.” Instead, she says things like, “Baby, we about to go in on this thang, OKAYYY?” She doesn’t explain policy—she performs it. Because to her, that’s what “connecting with the culture” looks like.

But it’s not cultural. It’s infantilizing. It’s not empowering. It’s insulting.

This soft bigotry has had a devastating impact on the black community over the last several decades. And the irony is that prior to the rise of this ideology, black Americans were improving on nearly every front. In the first half of the 20th century, despite facing intense legal segregation and rampant racism, black families were forming at higher rates than today. They were rising in income, growing rates of homeownership, starting businesses, and creating stable, self-reliant communities—largely without massive government assistance.

From the end of World War II through the early 1960s, black Americans were closing the gap in education and employment. The black marriage rate was among the highest in the country. Crime rates in black neighborhoods were lower. Progress was happening organically. Not because the federal government imposed it from above but because black communities demanded excellence from within.

Then something changed.

As the anti-war radicals of the 1960s settled into tenured academic positions, nonprofit foundations, and political office, they brought with them a new ideology: that black success wasn’t the result of effort or initiative but luck and exception. That black failure was not to be challenged but excused. And that the solution to inequality wasn’t to raise expectations but to lower standards.

This became the new gospel of the white liberal: permanent pity. And its apostles were people like Jasmine Crockett.

Today, too many black politicians—Crockett chief among them—offer performance over policy, emotion over reason, and theater over truth. Not because they hate black people. But because they’ve been trained to see black people as something less than what they are.

And that’s the real tragedy.