Do Democrats want to see racial diversity on both sides of the government? It’s difficult to say when the presence of people of color in a Republican administration is met with skepticism and accusations of tokenism. Look no further than Representative Rashida Tlaib, a freshman Michigan Democrat, who accused Representative Mark Meadows (R., N.C.) of using Lynne Patton, an African-American Trump administration official, as a “prop” during the Michael Cohen hearing before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.
Tlaib, who is Palestinian-American, said that Meadows was using Patton to counter Cohen’s accusations that Trump is a racist, and that it was “racist in itself” and “insensitive” to do so.
From the New York Times:
As a person of color in this committee, that is how I felt at that moment and I wanted to express that,” she said in the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s afternoon session with Mr. Cohen. “I’m saying that in itself it is a racist act.” . . .
The stunt “just shows how ignorant Republicans are when it comes to race,” Karine Jean-Pierre, a senior adviser to the progressive political organizing group MoveOn.org, wrote on Twitter. “It’s also offensive and beyond the pale.”
Tlaib later clarified that she didn’t intend to call Meadows, whose nieces and nephews are people of color, a racist, but that it was still a “racist act.”
The only person who should probably reflect on their own worldview after this spat is Rashida Tlaib, whose initial reaction to the presence of an African-American woman within the Trump administration was that she must’ve been coerced.
Patton responded on Instagram after the hearing, writing that the House Oversight Committee played the “race card.” Tlaib, she says, “placed more credence on the word of a self-confessed convicted perjurer than that of a highly-educated black woman who rose up the ranks of the most recognized global real-estate companies in the world, spoke before 25 million people at the Republican National Convention and now successfully oversees the largest HUD program office in the country.”
So Patton has an incredibly impressive résumé, but it seems that Trump critics are more interested in her race than her achievements.
When your worldview is anchored to identity politics, it’s not surprising that Democrats’ every interaction with other humans is coded in racial terms. As Tlaib demonstrates, this can generate extremely disparaging assumptions, such as assuming that a woman of color who has achieved the success that they claim is nearly exclusive to the privileged is a puppet for the nefarious, white Republicans. I’m reminded of the Yale and Princeton study that found that self-identified liberals play down their competence when speaking to racial minorities, not mentioning words that conveyed success and accomplishment, but rather, using words that conveyed warmth. The study found that white conservatives and Republican presidential candidates, however, didn’t significantly change their language when speaking with racial minorities versus when they spoke to a white audience.
Tlaib’s knee-jerk reaction was a product of this worldview that patronizes racial minorities, and anyone sincerely committed to improving their representation within government should rebuke her for these remarks. Why would any minorities want to work in government if their affiliation means they’re reduced to pawns? And aren’t Democrats supposed to encourage minority voices on the principle that others may not have the background or experience that they would? Meadows asked Patton to come to the hearing, where the topic of race would be brought up, to “shed some light” because of her experiences as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Ala., which Martin Luther King Jr. called the most segregated city in the country in the early ’60s. Isn’t that what representation is?
Not when you’re defending the president.