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From “Black Lives Matter” to “woke” to “based” and now “Say Her Name” — despite constantly working to obscure Black culture, conservatives sure love co-opting Black vernacular.
That’s apparently how we’ve arrived at this point, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., attempting to commandeer “Say Her Name,” a phrase widely used to raise awareness about Black women mistreated by police.
So — in a gross perversion of the phrase’s intent — Republicans are essentially using an anti-racist phrase to engender racist anger.
The phrase gained popularity after the 2015 death of Sandra Bland in Texas, and it had a resurgence during the racial justice protests of 2020 as activists used it to honor Breonna Taylor, who had been fatally shot by police in Kentucky. But in what seems like a clear attempt to troll Black activists, Greene and other conservatives have been using the phrase as a reference to Laken Riley, the nursing student allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant in Georgia. And they’ve done so as part of their effort to incite anger toward nonwhite migrants who enter the U.S. through the southern border.
So — in a gross perversion of the phrase’s intent — Republicans are essentially using an anti-racist phrase to engender racist anger.
Last week, Greene wore a “Say Her Name” shirt as part of her cringeworthy State of the Union outfit. And she shouted the phrase as President Joe Biden spoke. And Biden, as we know, did say Riley’s name during his address.
Greene certainly isn’t the only Republican looking to score political points by using Riley’s death as a cudgel to beat liberals over the head. But she’s certainly one of the most egregious. After all, her performative outrage was delivered in costume.
It’s not lost on me that she belongs to a conservative movement that seems infatuated with mimicking activists as of late. In recent years, we’ve seen Republicans comparing Trump to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. We’ve seen conservatives comparing violent rioters who stormed the Capitol to anti-racist protesters in the Black Lives Matter movement. And Greene herself has referred to jailed Jan. 6 defendants as “political prisoners,” the same language used for real civil rights heroes.
“Say Her Name,” it seems, is just the most recent example of white right-wingers’ rhetorical thievery. And Greene is holding the bag.