When White Liberals Leave the Room

The Black Conversation About Crockett, Race, and How We Actually Win

I told myself I wasn’t going to name names up in here, because like Chris Rock says, Black folks ain’t supposed to fight in front of white people. Then Steward Beckham dropped a comment in my Substack chat that I just could not let slide by in silence.

Steward Beckham opinion

So yep, I already broke my own rule and named the name. But I’m doing it on purpose, because the way we’re talking about Jasmine Crockett inside the family might be the very thing that decides whether she actually wins.

What Steward Beckham Said

Here’s what Steward actually said, boiled down. This is me paraphrasing so I hope I get this right: some folks in the centrist wing of the party (his word, and he’s right that “centrist” is not the same as “moderate”) are already pouring cold water on Crockett’s energy and opening pitch, and he felt he had to name identity to explain why that bothered him. He is clocking something real. Within hours of her announcement you had national write-ups calling her part of a “Tea Party-style revolt” and quietly suggesting she is “poisonous in a competitive district,” the kind of language that tells Black voters this candidate is exciting but also a little too much for “normal people.”

My instinct as a retired cop/armchair psychologist is not to stop at “centrists are hate-blocking a Black woman again,” even when that is how it feels in the body. I want to ask what their fear is trying to protect. Texas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, which means every living Texas Democrat has grown up inside a story where we lose statewide and tell ourselves we were foolish for getting our hopes up. On top of that you have John Cornyn on TV grinning about Crockett’s entry and calling her candidacy a “gift,” while pundits whisper that Republicans would rather run against the loud Black woman than the “normal” Democrat. If you are a centrist who has watched this state break your heart for thirty years, that gets into your nervous system.

So when Steward says they are sapping enthusiasm, I hear something slightly different underneath. I hear a part of the coalition that is terrified of being humiliated again, that has half-bought the right-wing story that a rough-edged Black woman cannot win a statewide race in Texas, and that confuses its own anxiety with pure strategic wisdom. The shadow here is not just “they do not like Crockett,” it is “we do not trust our own people to be fully themselves and still be electable.” That is why I do not want to just roast centrists in this piece. Crockett cannot win without some of them, and we cannot heal what we will not name.

Put The Fears On The Table

What I want to do in this essay is sit all of us down in the same living room, with white liberals peeking through the doorway, and ask a harder question: if the Black conversation is “we finally have a fighter,” and the centrist conversation is “Lord, please do not give the GOP an easy target,” what would it look like to put those two fears on the table instead of sniping at each other from our separate corners. Because if we can get honest about what is spooking the middle, and what is exhausting the base, we might actually find a strategy that does more than replay the last thirty years of losing.

Let’s turn the camera back on us for a minute, because the “Black conversation” about Crockett is not all worship songs and fire emojis. A lot of us love that she makes Trump squirm and calls out Cornyn without flinching. But some of the same folks cheering that energy also wince when she goes for the kind of personal shot that lands on the wrong bodies. The “bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body” line at Marjorie Taylor Greene was funny to plenty of straight Black folks, but queer women who proudly call themselves butch heard their own identity used as an insult and said so.

Same thing with her “slave mentality” comments about Latino Trump voters. That landed like a gut punch in parts of the Latino community, including among people who otherwise agree with her about Trump and about the stakes of this moment. Latino writers at MSNBC and elsewhere spelled out why it hurt: it treated a whole group’s complicated voting behavior as if they were simple minded and still on the plantation. Add in moments like mocking Greg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels,” which disability advocates flagged even as they hated his policies, and you start to see a pattern that is bigger than one clapback.

If we are honest, part of our hesitation to talk about this in front of white liberals is that we know how fast they weaponize our doubts. The same centrist consultant who clutches his pearls at her language will happily circulate our queer cousin’s critique of the “butch body” line as proof that Crockett is “too messy to be the nominee.” The same Latino organizer who is hurt by the “slave mentality” quote does not want to be turned into a prop on Fox News. So we swallow some of this, or we keep it on group chats and in side conversations after the Zoom ends. That is shadow work we have not finished.

From a Jungian angle, Crockett is carrying our desire for an unapologetic Black persona on the national stage, and our fear that this persona will burn down the coalition at the same time. That is why the conversation cannot just be “protect her at all costs” or “she is a liability, replace her with a nice safe Colin.” She is already in the race. She is already the one with the spotlight and the viral clips and the donor list. The real question is whether we can have a grown-folk talk about the harm some of her words have done to LGBTQ and Latino kin, and about how that plays in a state that has to build a multiracial, cross-gender, cross-identity majority, without handing her enemies the script to tear her down. That is the family meeting this piece is trying to host.

The Part Nobody Wants To Say

Here’s the part nobody wants to say out loud: if Jasmine Crockett wins this thing, it won’t be because Twitter loved her latest drag, it’ll be because the numbers in Texas finally broke their old pattern. Texas hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. In every modern statewide race, Democrats have needed three things and only ever managed one or two at a time: sky-high Black turnout, decent Latino margins, and just enough white suburban slippage away from the GOP to close the gap. When one of those legs is weak, the whole stool tips over.

That’s why I don’t want us to just clown the centrists who are nervous about her. If you look at what it will actually take, Crockett has to do something brutally hard: keep the base excited enough to stand in line in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Beaumont, while also not setting off every security alarm in the minds of the white swing voters in Katy and Frisco who are already telling themselves, “I’m not racist, I just don’t like all that yelling.” She has to hold queer Black and Latino voters who are side-eyeing some of her language, while asking them to still show up because the alternative is a Republican who will sign bills that erase them on paper. That is not a vibes problem; that is a coalition-engineering problem.

So when a centrist says, “I’m worried she can’t win statewide,” I hear bad faith sometimes, but I also hear the ghost of every almost-there campaign that watched the suburbs tighten up as soon as a candidate was framed as “too radical.” And when a younger Black voter says, “If you give me another oatmeal candidate I’m staying home,” I hear the ghost of every year their vote bought them nothing but a nicer-sounding ‘no.’ Crockett’s path to victory runs straight through that collision: a turnout operation that treats Black and brown enthusiasm as the engine, not an afterthought, and a message that forces white moderates to choose between their fear of a loud Black woman and their fear of full-blown authoritarianism. If we’re going to talk seriously about her winning, we have to stop pretending one side of that equation doesn’t exist.

What We Need From Crockett (And What She Needs From Us)

If we are serious about Jasmine Crockett winning, then “that’s just how she talks” cannot be the end of the conversation. We need her to keep aiming her fire at power, not at bodies that look like the very people she will need to turn out: no more jokes that land on butch women, disabled people, or Latino voters who are already catching hell in this state. We need to see her grow in public, not get defensive in public, when queer, Latino, and disability advocates say, “That one hurt.”

In return, she needs things from us that are bigger than applause gifs. She needs Black, brown, queer, and progressive voters to defend her when the attacks are racist, sexist, and cynical, even while we are still mad about the cuts that went too far. She needs us to give money and time, not just retweets, so she is not dependent on the same donor class that prefers safe candidates who never make history. And she needs us to keep telling her the truth inside the house, the way Steward did, so she is not stuck getting all her feedback from people who would be perfectly fine if she lost.

If You’re Still Here and You’re White or Centrist, This Part Is Yours

If you are a white liberal or a nervous centrist and you are still reading, you are already doing more than many of your peers. Your job is not to grab the critiques you just heard and run them up the flagpole as proof that “even Black folks say she is too much.” Your job is to notice how often “electability” in your circles quietly means “less Black, less woman, less queer, less angry,” and to refuse that shortcut when people start repeating it about Crockett.

I need you to hear that our arguments inside the family are not an invitation for you to manage us. When we say she hurt queer cousins with a joke, or Latino kin with a phrase, that is about repair, not replacement. The work on your side of the room is to talk to your own people, especially the white moderates who only know her from a Fox News chyron, and say, “You do not get to write her off just because she does not sound like the last white guy you voted for.” It is also to underwrite Black and brown media that will cover this race in more than two colors, so you are not relying on billionaire outlets to tell you what to think about a Black woman running in Texas.

When white liberals leave the room, the Black conversation about Crockett is messy, hopeful, irritated, and scared all at once. We love her mouth and we fear for her neck at the very same time. We shout when she swings at the people who want us erased, and we wince when we imagine the bill that might come due for a loud Black woman in Texas. We have seen too many “safe” losses already, and I cannot unsee the price tag on another one. We have swallowed too many wins that felt like losses in disguise, and I cannot pretend that a victory that slices up our own people would be a clean victory.

So here is my ask if you made it this far. Here is my ask if your chest got tight even while your head kept nodding. If you are Black or brown or queer, do not check out because this is complicated; lean in because it is complicated.

Talk about it in public when you can and in private when you must. Say what you need from her as loudly as you say what you love in her. Here is my ask if you are white or centrist and still reading: resist the reflex to turn our family argument into your closing argument against her. Sit with your own fear for a minute and ask what it would take for you to be brave enough to back a candidate who makes you a little uncomfortable but might finally make this state shift. And to circle back where we started: folks like Steward are not the problem. They are the proof. They are the proof that people who care enough to argue still believe Texas is worth fighting for.

If we can learn to hold that kind of argument in front of white people without forgetting we are arguing for each other, something deeper than one race shifts.

If we can remember that the point is not just to win a seat but to come out of this with a coalition that is more honest and more whole, then Crockett’s run becomes more than a gamble.

If we can look our fear of losing and our fear of each other straight in the face and still choose to stand side by side, then we are already practicing a different kind of politics.

If we can walk out of this race with more trust than we walked in, then Crockett’s run becomes a rehearsal for the kind of country we keep saying we want, and a small, stubborn step toward finally learning how to win together.

That’s why I’m all the way in on this work now . I’ve stepped out of gig work and into writing Xplisset Voice of America full time, because I believe we need one little newsroom that will Xpose the Lies. Xplore the Truth. Xplain the Real. every single week, especially when billionaire-owned media is busy smoothing the edges off stories like Crockett’s. If this piece hit you in the chest and you’ve got the means, upgrading to a paid subscription is how you buy me the hours to dig, cross-check, and stand toe-to-toe with outlets that have whole legal departments on retainer. Your support keeps this space fierce and keeps it free for the folks who are already choosing between rent, groceries, and a little bit of sanity. If you believe in what we’re trying to build here, I’m asking you to stand in it with me.

Sources:

1. https://www.axios.com/2025/12/09/democrats-schumer-primaries-progressives-texas

2. https://puck.news/blue-jasmine/

3. https://www.reformaustin.org/elections/texas-has-not-elected-a-state-wide-official-in-decades-can-that-change-next-year/

4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/12/09/dems-disarray-texas/

5. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/08/2025/cornyn-welcomes-gift-of-crockett-campaign-in-texas

6. https://www.advocate.com/politics/greene-crockett-butch-insult

7. https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2024/05/30/bleach-blonde-bad-built-butch-body

8. https://www.ms.now/opinion/msnbc-opinion/jasmine-crockett-slave-mentality-latino-voters-trump-rcna184537

9. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/jasmine-crockett-wants-old-guard-democrats-to-make-way-for-young-freedom-fighters

10. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/25/jasmine-crockett-greg-abbott-wheelchair/

11. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/25/jasmine-crockett-governor-greg-abbott/

12. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/25/jasmine-crockett-greg-abbott-reaction-027823

13. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/08/crockett-announces-texas-senate-bid-00680505

14. https://www.keranews.org/politics/2024-05-23/a-verbal-spat-between-reps-crockett-and-greene-highlights-racial-and-gender-tensions

15. https://apnews.com/article/a38d50b41e35cc6e05f5d72ad74ff54f