Yesterday, the intertubes were abuzz over an ad congressional candidate Nikki Tinker is running against incumbent Steve Cohen. Cohen, you may remember, is the Congressman who tried to join the Congressional Black Caucus but was refused because he is white. He recently sponsored a House resolution apologizing for slavery on behalf of the U.S. Government, something many people saw as an attempt to pander to his black constituents before the primary today. The district he represents, TN-09, is Harold Ford’s old district and is mostly black.
Tinker, who is black, has been running a campaign heavy on the identity politics, and a lot of folks were justifiably outraged by an ad that has since been taken down from youtube, but the folks at TPM have a description.
“While he’s in our churches, clapping his hands and tapping his feet … he’s the only senator who thought our kids shouldn’t be allowed to pray in school,” the announcer says, referring to an old vote against school prayer from when Cohen was a state senator. And remember, this is coming from a Democrat.
Many people have interpreted the ad as anti-Semitic, because Cohen is Jewish. But Tinker’s real problem with Cohen — the problem she hopes the residents of TN-09 have with him — is that he’s white. Cohen claims to be a supporter of school prayer, and the vote she’s referring to is over ten years old, which tells you how weak her case is. What makes the ad even more absurd is the idea that Cohen shouldn’t be in “their” churches.
He should be there, he should be in hanging out in barbershops, patronizing restaurants, visiting schools, and basically doing what he can to get to know his constituents better. He should also be in the CBC, where he can better learn how to serve his constituents. If Cohen wasn’t in churches, that would be a reason not to like him as a representative.
Tinker doesn’t really have much to run on against Cohen, other than black anxiety about disenfranchisement. But that’s a feeling that shouldn’t be dismissed — black folks have fought dearly for the right to represent themselves. The issue is whether Tinker being black has anything to do with her ability to represent black interests. The answer would appear to be no. So she’s appealing to the worst of human instincts, attempting to paint her opponent as a dangerous cultural outsider because of his association with whiteness. Cohen’s actually whiteness is almost incidental — if you’re not convinced just ask Corey Booker about his experience with Sharpe James.
I think people get shocked by this kind of tactic even though it’s fairly common because there’s this bizarre idea that somehow, because of racism, black people should be immune to the kind of petty clannishness that afflicts everyone else. There really isn’t much different about what Tinker is doing in TN-09 and what the Republicans do every year. And it’s not like there has to be a difference in the racial background of the candidates. In Louisiana and Mississippi the GOP tried its best to tie Don Cazayoux and Travis Childers to Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright in order to paint them as cultural outsiders (as with Booker, the race of the candidates themselves is less important than their “associations”). In that case, it made national news because it had implications for congressional races in the fall should Obama be at the top of the ticket. In the case of TN-09 case, it’s mostly national news because people aren’t really used to seeing a cultural association with whiteness as an electoral liability. It’s usually the other way around.
What’s really remarkable about Nikki Tinker’s racist campaign is that it’s not remarkable at all. It’s the typical culture war stuff–just from a black perspective. Personally I feel the same way about this kind of black identity politics as I do about the GOP’s white identity politics — that it’s a hustle, wherein politicians use their cultural currency to distract from issues of substance. He or she uses whatever connection to a community he has to appeal to their sense of familiarity, which serves to obscure their competence and priorities. And as the success of the Republican Party has shown us, it’s remarkably effective.
— A. Serwer
