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Conservatives Snub Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter After Her Reagan 'Racism' Comments

© AP Photo / Mark LennihanAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the winner of a Democratic Congressional primary in New York, talks to the media, Wednesday, June 27, 2018, in New York. Ocasio-Cortez, 28, upset U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley in Tuesday's election.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the winner of a Democratic Congressional primary in New York, talks to the media, Wednesday, June 27, 2018, in New York. Ocasio-Cortez, 28, upset U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley in Tuesday's election. - Sputnik International
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Conservatives on Twitter slammed Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she made the claim that “Reaganism in the ’80’s” had fuelled tensions between “white working class Americans” and “brown and black working class Americans.”

The twitterstorm came after Ocasio-Cortez made her statements to The Intercept’s Briahna Gray on Saturday at the South by Southwest Conference & Festivals in Austin, Texas.

“A perfect example of how special interests and the powerful have pitted white working class Americans against brown and black working-class Americans is Reaganism in the ’80s when he started talking about welfare queens,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

READ MORE: Ocasio-Cortez on Ethics Allegations: ‘Random Claims’ Filed by ‘GOP Troll Groups’

“So you think about this image of welfare queens and what he was really trying to talk about was … this like really resentful vision of essentially black women who were doing nothing, that were ‘sucks’ on our country. That’s not explicit racism but still rooted in a racist caricature,” she added.

Her words were met with an immediate reaction from conservatives and supporters of the Republican Party, who countered the claims of the young Democrat – sometimes, as in the case of actor James Woods, with the 40th US President’s own words.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham noted that Ocasio-Cortez “wasn’t alive when Reagan was elected in a landslide and re-elected in a bigger landslide, sarcastically calling her “brilliant.”

Other prominent conservative figures also reacted to the comments made by the freshman democratic socialist.

Ronald Reagan faced several accusations of racism during his presidency, as he opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibiting racial discrimination in voting, which was signed into law by President Johnson. However, during his presidency, he also signed several acts that helped to structure the life of immigrants and minorities within the country, including the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, also known as the Reagan Amnesty.

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