DC and its residents are real. Lying about that helped enable Wednesday’s attack on the US Capitol.

Are all Americans “real Americans”, or are some of us in a different category? It’s nothing new to hear national politicians question the “realness” of the residents of Washington, DC. And though the drumbeat of alarming, often conspiracy theory-driven events has escalated, yesterday’s events made it clear as day that fictionalizing a real place where people live and work as a “swamp” whose only purpose is nefarious has a profound cost.

Even if all one hears on the news about our fair District is about the activities of the federal government, it’s hard to ignore 700,000 residents, right? But a majority of our residents identify as Black. What allows leaders to apply this lie with impunity are long-held, racist ideas about who qualifies as a “real” person, deserving of public services and representations on par with every other American.

Is DC real life? Is it just fantasy?

Congressperson Lauren Boebert brought that tired rhetoric back to the fore this week with her DC law-flouting ad about toting a gun around Capitol Hill, which happens to be my neck of the woods. “One of the challenges of working here in DC is that people don’t understand how we live in real America,” she says, simultaneously evoking an out-of-touch, “liberal” enclave and a dangerous place to walk to work (presumably filled with dangerous people, who are conspicuously absent), down an alleyway I know well featuring nothing more notable than a variety of garage doors. What’s she getting at?

Colorado’s 3rd District, which Congressperson Boebert represents, was classified by the last census as roughly two thirds urban and one third rural. (Presumably the Congressperson considers the majority of her own constituents to be “real”). Seven in ten residents identify as white, nearly a quarter as Latino/a, and just under 3% as Native American, Black or Asian.The median household income in 2019 was $59,973. Concerning educational attainment, 91% have attained a high school or higher level of education.

DC’s figures differ in a couple key respects that could give us a clue. Just four in ten of our population identifies as white, slightly more as Black, just under a quarter Latin American and less than 5% as Asian, Native American or other races. The median household income in 2019 was $92,266, but the proportions of residents living below the poverty line are not worlds away from that of Boebert’s district.

The Washington region counts the highest number of advanced degrees in the country; but a similar proportion of residents as Colorado’s 3rd have not finished high school. Another favorite theme of the “real people” brigade is that “everyone is from somewhere else”; but DC and Colorado have a similar proportion of out-of-jurisdiction transplants.

The difference that most sticks out to me between these two places is the racial makeup. The ease with which this public representative relegates the existence of Black residents to nothingness should be called out for the racism it represents.

We’ve heard it many times before, with leaders going so far as to deem disenfranchisement of DC-based citizens as preferable to the potential loss of parking rights. For elected officials in need of a “bogey-place” that supposedly represents interests inimical to our democracy, it’s convenient to invent a fantasy version of Washington or D.C. as not a city or a jurisdiction, but a playground for influential “elites” unconnected to the needs of “real Americans.” Even the dearth of miners among our working ranks and hints that “realness” is attained through settling down and having suburban-style, child-rearing lifestyles, have been used to deny DC’s statehood.

They know better.

Even officials whose residence lies within blocks of the Capitol, like Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, can’t fail to perceive 700,000 people living and working in the District who have needs, experiences and contributions that are in few ways distinct from those of their own constituents. But the fact that DC residents live our lives around far more intense security protocols than almost anyone else in the US, only to have those fail at the moment they were most needed, shows how little our experiences are valued by the federal government.

The point has to be spelled out: reducing a majority Black city to being less than real echoes structurally racist applications of elected representation (like the “three-fifths compromise”). If elites aren’t real and Black people can simply be erased from consideration, it’s not as hard to bend reality to a place where a mob forcefully gaining entry to the U.S. Capitol is a conceptual act with philosophical meaning rather than an organized act of violent aggression with “real” consequences.

Even the idea that we don’t count (or raise?) families among our population (20% of whom are children) has been used to support this ridiculous trope.

Sen. Ben Sasse says Washington, D.C. is not at the center of America but communities where 300 million people live and moms and dads raise kids.

There are indeed 700,000 people living in D.C. outside of the Capitol, many raising kids here.

— Fenit Nirappil (@FenitN) January 7, 2021

I know. It’s a synecdoche that erases the city’s residents and reinforces misperceptions

— Fenit Nirappil (@FenitN) January 7, 2021

What’s the cost of being erased as citizens?

The most obvious potential benefit of being “real” Americans seems to be statehood, something held over the heads of DC residents as the privilege of the “real”. Far from a Sesame Street with lovable characters we could draw on for elected officials, we even have a pool ready who could plausibly step up to the bat to represent us in such a scenario.

Statehood for DC might not have prevented the travesty that unfolded yesterday at the US Capitol at the urging of the President. Maybe it would have if Mayor Bowser had authority over the DC National Guard, as state executives enjoy, rather than the President.

Either way, denying DC statehood is part of a narrative about what the place and its residents mean to the federal government. Do citizens here have the same rights as any other jurisdiction? No. Does that matter if we can be relegated to being “not real”? Apparently not. Should we have to run campaigns reminding ostensible public servants whose wages DC residents help pay that we’re real? No.

Our inner grownups know that tribalist approaches to what makes us “real” or somehow more valid as people or citizens make no sense. Urban dwellers have often come from suburban or rural communities somewhere down the line, and sometimes vice versa. Neither our economy nor our pluralistic society survive without cities and citizens of diverse demographics. Implications that “real Americans” have a specific family status, employment, or geographical location are no concealment at all for racist, classist, homophobic and sexist beliefs about who the American government serves.

The fact that it’s supposed to serve every American equally is as fundamental to the future of our democracy as it gets.