Outspoken freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., fired back at critics following her controversial remarks about race and policing.
"I'm going to call out every injustice I see. It's probably what makes most people uncomfortable when I speak the truth. My comments weren't racist, out of order, or 'inappropriate,'" Tlaib wrote in an opinion piece for The Detroit News.
"It is inappropriate to implement a broken, flawed and racist technology that doesn't recognize black and brown faces in a city that is over 80% black."
Tlaib was responding to a Detroit News editorial in which the newspaper said her insistence that the Detroit Police Department should only hire African-Americans to work as analysts for its facial recognition system because blacks are more accurate at identifying people of their own race was "racist" and wrong.
In her defense, Tlaib argued that studies indicate she is correct in that people of one race cannot accurately identify people of other races.
"I'm not going to mince words when my residents are threatened. The Detroit News should not take Detroit Police Chief James Craig's bait and help him to distract from the fact that broken technology is being used to lock up black and brown people in Detroit," she wrote.
Tlaib added, "On my tour I watched as 178 matches came up for a single male suspect, including a woman. It takes someone looking through all the matches to determine who is the best fit, with major consequences — these matches are used to help issue arrest warrants, which can change people's lives forever."
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