The ‘Black Jesse Helms’ Runs for Congress
25 October 2006 6:00 am by Taylor Marsh
The “Black Jesse Helms” Runs for Congress
Expert guest post by Michael K. Fauntroy, Ph.D.
Vernon
Robinson, the Republican candidate for the 13th congressional district
of North Carolina, is brutalizing GOP efforts to win more African American converts.
He is embarrassing national Republicans who want to reach out to Black voters
around the country by running a campaign that caters to the fringes of American
conservative politics. Robinson may well be the most conservative person running
for Congress this year and his bid to defeat incumbent Brad Miller is based
on arguments more likely to inflame than inform. He trades in hostility to the
poor and immigrants, which is particularly bizarre because Robinson is Black;
indeed he caused a stir by stating: “Jesse Helms is back, this time he’s
Black.” You may not know Robinson, but his blame-the-victim brand of politics
is very familiar – he is the living embodiment of Jesse Helms and our
political discourse is much worse as a result.
To be sure, it is not bizarre that he is a Black conservative running for office;
that happens regularly. What is unusual is the fact that Robinson is running
the kind of race-baiting, hate-filled campaign one would expect from a White
racial conservative. His inflammatory ads are beyond the pale and spray bigotry
over the airwaves like a machine gun. They play on all the popular bogeymen
that resonate with voters these days: illegal immigration, gay marriage, and
abortion as well as others we haven’t heard much of recently, like making
English the official national language. His positions aren’t that unusual,
either; many candidates have won races across the country on the strength of
aggressive positions on these issues. It is the way in which he treats these
issues in his ads tht suggest Robinson should not be taken seriously. If he
were White, he would have been denounced long ago as a racist.
Robinson has also established himself as a clever mudslinger. He continues
to insinuate that Miller, a childless man, is an ultra-liberal gay – a
charge he hopes will resonate with conservatives in this district that includes
parts of Greensboro and Raleigh. Robinson has called his opponent “Sugar
Daddy Miller” who has given away tax dollars and has “sneaky aliens
eating from his hand”. His most inflammatory ad may be the one that features
a Black woman dejectedly balling up a job application as the narrator says:
“You needed that job and you were the best qualified, but they gave it
to an illegal alien so they could pay him under the table.” Sound familiar?
Well, it’s nearly identical to the racist ad Jesse Helms used against
Harvey Gantt in their 1990 campaign. The Helms ad was denounced for its overt
implication that affirmative action necessarily required Whites to lose their
jobs or not get work for which they were qualified. Robinson is a Black man
who mimics White racists. Delightful.
Even though Robinson is running in a reliably safe Democratic district, he
should be watched because of his ability to court contributions from the fringes
of American politics. He’s from the Tom Tancredo-Ann Coulter-Pat Buchanan
wing of the Republican Party and has parlayed his inflammatory positions into
more than $3 million in campaign contributions over the last three years for
two House campaigns (he lost a 2004 race). Imagine how much he could raise if
he was seen as a possible winner.
Robinson is an unfortunate, albeit interesting, contrast to African American
politicians around the country who are trying to reach out to White voters to
win races. Barack Obama and Harold Ford, for example, are viewed as part of
the vanguard of new Black elected officials who downplay race and appeal to
hope to actively court White voters while maintaining Black support. Robinson,
on the other hand, appears to repel Black votes while courting far-right White
voters with anti-Black, anti-Hispanic rhetoric. Robinson is trying to pull America
backward while other African Americans are pushing the country into a new, more
enlightened era of political discourse.
