{"id":69993,"date":"2026-05-13T21:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/69993\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T21:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:26:11","slug":"jen-kiggans-agrees-with-host-about-cotton-picking-hakeem-jeffries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/69993\/","title":{"rendered":"Jen Kiggans agrees with host about ‘cotton-picking’ Hakeem Jeffries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t<\/p>\n

\"cotton\"<\/p>\n

<\/a>Photo: \u00a9 BCFC\/stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

I\u2019m here to sheepishly admit that I hadn\u2019t fully thought through the racially-charged meaning of the turn of phrase \u201ccotton-picking\u201d until this recent controversy involving Congresswoman Jen Kiggans.<\/p>\n

Kiggans landed herself in hot water after enthusiastically agreeing with MAGA talk-radio host Rich Herrera at the end of a Monday interview, in which Herrera said Hakeem Jeffries, the U.S. House Minority Leader and a Black male, needs to keep his \u201ccotton-picking hands off Virginia,\u201d in relation to the national battle over congressional redistricting.<\/p>\n

ICYMI<\/p>\n

Kiggans, who is facing an uphill battle to retain her seat representing the Second District in Congress, quickly responded:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right, ditto, yes, yes to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oooh, yeah.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s going to hurt.<\/p>\n

The White MAGA Republican said later in the day that she was agreeing with the sentiment of the statement, but not the language \u2013 and that she wished she had spoken up about the term used at the time.<\/p>\n

Which, at that point, sorry, too late.<\/p>\n

\u201cWords matter, and when elected officials use racially-charged language, it undermines the very fabric of our communities,\u201d said Cozy Bailey, president of the\u00a0NAACP\u00a0Virginia State Conference. \u201cRep. Kiggans\u2019 agreement with such comments is deeply troubling. We must hold our leaders accountable and demand a standard of respect and dignity for all Virginians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jennifer McClellan, a Black woman who represents Virginia\u2019s Fourth District in Congress, and Bobby Scott, a Black man who represents the Third District, also issued a pointed joint statement on the Kiggans controversy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a radio interview, Congresswoman\u00a0Jen\u00a0Kiggans\u00a0enthusiastically agreed with the statement that Leader Hakeem Jeffries should keep his \u2018cotton-picking hands off Virginia.\u2019 She should apologize to Leader Jeffries, all Virginians, and anyone else offended by these comments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Elaine<\/a>Elaine Luria<\/p>\n

Also piling on: Elaine Luria<\/a>, Kiggans\u2019 Democratic opponent in the Second.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe racist comments proudly endorsed today by\u00a0Jen\u00a0Kiggans\u00a0warning House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to \u2018get your cotton-picking hands off of Virginia\u2019 are disgusting and beneath any elected official. I grew up in the South. I know what these racist dog whistles mean,\u201d said Luria, who is White.<\/p>\n

Full disclosure: I\u2019m a White male, like Luria, and like her, I grew up in the South, and as I wrote above, I have to, sheepishly, concede that the racial connotations of the term \u201ccotton-picking\u201d had not occurred to me prior to this controversy.<\/p>\n

But now that I see it, I can\u2019t unsee it.<\/p>\n

Lacey Wilson, a program manager at the Underground Railroad Education Center<\/a>, spoke to a local news station about the matter, noting that the term, over time, grew detached from its literal meaning, pointing to its usage in Saturday morning cartoons as a reason that people may recall it without connecting it to its early historical roots.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s clear, Wilson said, that the term \u201ccotton-picking\u201d traces back to the literal act of picking cotton by hand in the American South \u2014 and that this labor was done largely by enslaved Black Americans and later by Black laborers through repressive economic systems such as sharecropping.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that there are people who say that who do not intend for it to be offensive,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cHowever, I think the impact is perhaps far more important.\u201d<\/p>\n

This controversy is playing out against a racially-charged current-events backdrop \u2013 Herrera was blasting Jeffries for suggesting approaches to reverse a MAGA state court decision undermining congressional redistricting in Virginia, after the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door for Southern states to begin their own redistricting aimed at disenfranchising Black voters.<\/p>\n

ICYMI<\/p>\n

\u201cThese comments come at a time when the Supreme Court and Republican-controlled state legislatures are disenfranchising Black voters and wiping out Black representation across Southern states, which\u00a0Jen\u00a0Kiggans\u00a0applauds,\u201d Luria said.<\/p>\n

Kiggans \u201cshould immediately and publicly apologize and denounce these racist remarks that have no place in our Commonwealth or our politics,\u201d Luria said.<\/p>\n

The only quibble I\u2019d offer to Luria\u2019s statement there is, more important than Jen Kiggans absentmindedly agreeing with a MAGA radio host using a racially-charged term, is Kiggans enthusiastically agreeing with the strategy of disenfranchising Black voters.<\/p>\n

Words matter; actions matter more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: \u00a9 BCFC\/stock.adobe.com I\u2019m here to sheepishly admit that I hadn\u2019t fully thought through the racially-charged meaning of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[477,3206,485],"class_list":{"0":"post-69993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hakeem-jeffries","8":"tag-congress","9":"tag-election-2026","10":"tag-hakeem-jeffries"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116569386739470437","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}