Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.) says she is “not ok” after a virtual town hall she was hosting was repeatedly interrupted by racist slurs.
Hayes, the first Black congresswoman to represent the state of Connecticut, has been hosting multiple town halls on Zoom as part of her reelection campaign.
Hayes in a Medium essay recounts that she was hosting her fourth meeting when she heard someone say, “Shut up N-word.” Hayes’s team quickly muted the offending participant and removed them from the meeting. But shortly afterward, another participant began playing the same racial slur on a loop over music.
According to Hayes, two more people continued the harassment for six minutes. Someone in the group chat also posted “GO PICK YOUR COTTON” repeatedly, according to Hayes.
After the town hall ended, the congresswoman said she had only nine minutes before another meeting, doing her best to settle herself after the racist onslaught she had just experienced.
“Black women are expected to press on, to ignore this behavior; to not talk explicitly about it because it is uncomfortable, divisive or does not reflect the sentiments of most people,” she wrote.
“I have watched other women weather this storm and fend off these types of attacks and wonder if in their quiet places they have felt what I am feeling right now. We have become numb to this behavior, instinct kicks in and we just move on. So many well intentioned people say things like, ignore it, you’re better than that or don’t let it bother you.”
David X. Sullivan, Hayes’s Republican challenger, tweeted about the incident saying, “It is appalling that a bigoted coward would direct insults at Congresswoman Hayes, interfere and disrupt a legitimate campaign activity, and besmirch the reputation of the good people of the 5th District of Connecticut.”
Hayes’s experience is only one of countless coordinated attacks that have happened on the videoconferencing software, which has experienced a boom in use since the beginning of the pandemic.
In an article published by Al Jazeera, Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change said, “In the United States, particularly, there is a history of Black people having their community events disrupted: in recent memory white nationalists have shot up Black churches. Now, our Zoom gatherings are being targeted. Technology is supposed to bring us to the future, but instead it’s dragging us to the past.”
In April, the Zoom announced new security upgrades that were aimed at stopping such harassment.