Jamelle Bouie on the growing class of immigrant Republicans: -Erika Mia Love’s first race was close. Two years ago, Love, a Haitian-American who was then thirty-six years old and a Republican rising star, finished seven hundred and sixty-eight votes behind her opponent, Jim Matheson, a six-term Democratic incumbent, in a hard-fought battle for Utah’s newly minted Fourth Congressional District, which was created after redistricting in 2011. In the spring of 2013, Love announced that she would run for the seat again. That December, Matheson announced his retirement, making Love the favorite to replace him. This November fourth, she did just that, becoming the first black Republican woman elected to Congress. In her victory speech, Love did not shy away from the significance of her win. Many of the naysayers out there said that Utah would never elect a black, Republican, L.D.S. [Latter-day Saints] woman to Congress, she said to a crowd of supporters on election night. Not only did we do it, we were the first to do it. It’s a real accomplishment. Ninety-one per cent of black American women who cast ballots in this year’s House elections voted Democratic, and ninety-six per cent voted for President Obama in the 2012 Presidential contest. That the G.O.P. could find a black woman to run was impressive enough; that she won is even more surprising. But Love didn’t want to dwell on all that. The day after her win, in an interview on CNN, she pushed back when race was raised. I think what we need to mention here is this had nothing do with race, she said. Understand that Utahans have made a statement that they’re not interested in dividing Americans based on race or gender. . . . That’s really what made history here. It’s that race, gender, had nothing to do with it. Principles had everything to do with it, and Utah values had everything to do with it. Some of this is just a politician’s dodge; Love didn’t want to answer the question, so she disputed the premise. But some of it, I think, reflects her unusual place on the American political landscape. Unlike the most prominent black Republican in Congress, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, Love is not the descendant of American slaves. She’s the daughter of Haitian immigrants, a first-generation American whose story is tied up in both black America and the particular experience of immigrant families. As a politician, her identity has much more to do with the latter than with the former.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 22:56:00 +0000
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