Being a woman of color in politics isn’t easy. And it certainly doesn’t help to be challenging an established white male incumbent with millions in the bank and endless connections. But that’s exactly what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is doing, and incumbent NY-14 Rep. Joe Crowley isn’t happy about it.

During a meet-and-greet in Queens, Crowley, who is running to serve his tenth term in Congress, used common racialized and gendered criticisms lobbed at women of color running for office to critique his 28-year-old Puerto Rican-American challenger. The Intercept‘s Ryan Grim reported:

His opponent, he said, was trying to make the campaign “about race” — a strategy he called “unnecessarily divisive” at a time when the party needed to be “fighting Republicans, not other Democrats,” according to two people at the gathering. […] The host of the event, Aujla… had heard him make a version of that remark before. “I don’t remember him saying that directly, but I have heard him say at other places, ‘I can’t help the color of my skin or anything like that, but I am very diverse, I support very diverse people,’ or something to that extent,” said Aujla.

Crowley, who currently serves as Chairman of the Queens Democratic Committee and represents NY-14 in the House of Representatives, though he previously represented NY-07 prior to redistricting, is frustrated with the fact that Ocasio-Cortez has not been shy about discussing identity in a time where the Democratic Party is being forced to reckon with the problematic nature of its overwhelmingly white leadership. Despite relying on voters of color and especially Black women for electoral success, Democratic Party institutions and leaders have shown little interesting in racial justice, or even talking about race at all. As Ocasio-Cortez often says, Crowley is a white man representing a district with a 70% population of people of color. Moreover, he has never faced a credible challenger since he entered office nearly two decades ago.

It is not uncommon for people of color to be called “divisive” for discussing race, whether it be in or out of politics. Many Democrats, like Crowley, would prefer to ignore the lack of racial diversity in party leadership since an influx of progressive people of color would threaten the status quo. Ocasio-Cortez noted Crowley’s hypocrisy in a statement to The Intercept:

The congressman could have helped that he accepted inheritance of his seat from a multigenerational political dynasty without a true primary — a process by which people of color are historically locked out of representation. The congressman could help that he voted to establish ICE. The congressman can help the fact that he accepts money from developers that are displacing our communities and the folks criminalizing our backyards. Additionally, why is it that the congressman can proudly discuss his Irish heritage on the campaign trail, but I am somehow barred from mentioning my Puerto Rican family?

Ultimately, what Crowley wants to do here is silence Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As a woman of color in politics myself, I can easily recognize that Crowley is using familiar techniques to diminish the significance of the racial dynamics at play and ignore the reality that he is very much benefitting from white supremacy. The reason he shows no interest in dismantling white hegemony is because white hegemony is keeping him in power. Addressing the concerns of his constituents of color threatens the fragile veneer of allyship he has created for himself, one that is easily shattered if you examine his voting record.

Crowley, like his fellow white incumbent Carolyn Maloney in NY-12, is hoping that anti-Trump fervor in a highly diverse Democratic district and the incumbency advantage will carry him to an easy victory in the June 26 primary. Like Maloney, who is also being challenged by a young progressive of color, Suraj Patel, Crowley doesn’t have much of a message beyond Donald Trump Is Bad™. Crowley told the meet-and-greet crowd that he was “destin[ed]” to challenge Trump. “I was born for this role,” he said. I find this assertion quite odd given that Crowley just recently voted for a “Blue Lives Matter” bill that is very much in line with Donald Trump’s ideology and has declined to call for the abolition of ICE, likely because he helped create the racist agency in the first place.

All this goes to show just how much white Democrats take their constituents of color for granted. I do not doubt that Crowley thinks he is an ally to people of color, and that is precisely why it’s so disturbing to me to see him and other congressional Democrats return from meet-and-greets in their communities to support a reactionary “movement” that exists solely in opposition to Black Lives Matter and to fund a white supremacist detention and deportation machine that functions under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, thus fundamentally framing immigrants as a threat to national security, a highly racialized sentiment that spiked after 9/11, prompting the creation of the DHS and along with it ICE and CBP.

White politicians, including Democrats, think that they can sufficiently represent people of color but then get angry and dismissive when their constituents of color appropriately criticize them for supporting racist policies and institutions. White Democrats like Joe Crowley and Carolyn Maloney claim that they are key to the Trump Resistance, but they are not all that different from Trump in the first place. Sure, the Crowley and Maloney crowd opposes Obamacare repeal, a Mexico-U.S. border wall, and most of Trump’s other wildly unpopular proposals, but they aren’t interested in the systemic change that could dismantle what made Trump possible in the first place.

Full disclosure: As Chief Policy Strategist at Brand New Congress, Jordan Valerie works with and supports Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign.