Ayanna Pressley on Racism

Ayanna Pressley

Role at the time: United States Representative for Massachusetts's 7th district and one of the women named in the remarks

Statement summary

Representative Ayanna Pressley, one of the five Black women Laura Loomer described using the word "ghetto" and a gendered slur, responded by opening with Queen Latifah's line "who you calling a b****?" She said she had not intended to respond but would not accept the disrespect, invoked her daughter and her mother, and said the matter was larger than the women named, describing it as part of a coordinated campaign against Black people, Black families and Black women. She linked it to the end of Roe and rising maternal mortality among Black women, the removal of Black women from the federal workforce, the dismantling of diversity programmes, and Justice Department action against Lisa Cook and Letitia James.

“I wasn't gonna enter the chat to respond to an ignorant and desperate woman who yesterday referred to myself and several of my sister Congresswomen as ghetto black b****. I'm not raising my daughter Cora to accept that kind of disrespect.”