The divided House Thursday passed legislation to make Washington, D.C., the 51st state and to grant its more than 700,000 residents full representation in Congress.
The strictly party-line vote in the House was 216 to 208, with all Republicans rejecting the statehood bill, dubbed H.R. 51. The legislation has support from President Biden but faces long odds of passing in the 50-50 split Senate.
Debate over statehood got particularly heated on the House floor Thursday when New York Democrat Rep. Mondaire Jones accused certain Republicans of being against D.C. statehood because the district was not White enough in their minds to qualify for self-rule.
“I have had enough of my colleagues’ racist insinuations that somehow that people of Washington, D.C., are incapable or even unworthy of our democracy,” Jones said in a floor speech that drew a quick rebuke from Republicans. “One Senate Republican said that D.C. wouldn’t be a ‘well-rounded, working-class state.’ I had no idea there were so many syllables in the word White.”
D.C. is 46% Black and 46% White, according to 2019 Census estimates.
Jones continued: “One of my House Republican colleagues said that D.C. shouldn’t be a state because the district doesn’t have a landfill. My goodness, with all the racist trash my colleagues have brought to this debate, I can see why they’re worried about having a place to put it.” – READ MORE
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