North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is one of a handful of black Republican elected officials to find themselves in the crosshairs of editorial cartoons depicting them as either part of the Ku Klux Klan or as Uncle Toms. This in an era that is supposed to be about celebrating racial justice.
Robinson said he knows he is not the first, nor will he be the last, but he believes it is important for him to say that WRAL crossed a line this week when it portrayed him as a member of the Klan — especially given that that news organization is the largest in his state.
“Had this cartoon been done by some private individual on Facebook, on a Facebook page, or on Instagram, I’d have just left it alone,” said Robinson in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
On Tuesday, the editorial section of Capitol Broadcasting, which owns WRAL, depicted Robinson and the other Republican members of the North Carolina Board of Education as members of the KKK. In North Carolina, the lieutenant governor has a seat on the state Board of Education.
“This depiction of me and other Republican board members was done by a news outlet here in North Carolina that says it prides itself [on] delivering fair, balanced news and providing a service to the people, where they’re trying to get information that’s valuable to their readers in understanding policy issues that are important to them,” said Robinson.
“In other words, WRAL has said that they stand against bigotry, that they stand against racism, that they stand against inaccuracies,” he said. “Then, they post a cartoon that is not only bigoted but also historically inaccurate.”
Robinson said he is not holding anyone to his own standards. “I’m holding WRAL to their standards,” he said. “I would expect that the rest of the community would do the same thing because as a major news outlet in this state, I think people would expect much better of them.”
The editorial was a reaction to Robinson’s rejection of the Democrats on the board wanting teachers to instruct students on systemic racism within government and society as part of the school curriculum.
WRAL released a statement saying editorial cartoons are meant to be provocative and that no one really believes Republicans on the state Board of Education are members of the KKK. To which Robinson responded, well, why run it then?
Robinson isn’t the first black Republican to have a major news organization’s editorial cartoonist in his or her home state depict some sort of malicious association between a conservative black candidate or elected official and the Klan. In October 2019, just days before the statewide elections in Kentucky, Daniel Cameron, a black Republican candidate for attorney general of Kentucky, was depicted in a Lexington Herald-Leader editorial cartoon holding on to a Ku Klux Klan robe being worn by former President Donald Trump that shows him walking away from a burning cross.
In reaction, Cameron tweeted: “Let’s make history on Nov. 5 and show we don’t take orders from the elites anymore.” Cameron won his race, like Robinson becoming the first black man to win statewide in his state. And like Robinson, he was a bigger vote-getter than the governor at the top of the ticket, outperforming both the winner and the loser of that race.
Last August, South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott received the “Uncle Tom” treatment in an editorial cartoon called “Uncle Tim’s Cabin” by cartoonist Jeff Danziger in the Times Argus. “Uncle Tom” is a racial slur insinuating that a black man is excessively obedient or servile toward white people.
Scott, Robinson, and Cameron have all found ways to prevail over both the blatant and concealed racism that the media and the public direct toward them because they are members of the Republican Party. In particular, the association of the KKK with the Republicans is historically inaccurate.
“To put a Ku Klux Klan robe on members of the Grand Old Party — the Republican Party, which is the party that is responsible for ending slavery and for ending Jim Crow — is blatantly, historically inaccurate,” said Robinson. The Republican Party, he added, “was formed partly to stand up against the evils of slavery. To depict us, GOP members of the state school board, as racist because we are diametrically opposed to these standards, it is historically inaccurate. What’s more, it’s just wrong. It’s wrong in every way that you can think of.”
Robinson said ultimately what the editorial cartoon directed at him verified was that there is a willingness by the press to rewrite history and an intolerance in the press for the existence of black conservatives.
“The history of the Republican Party is a history of fighting for freedom and equality for all people,” he said. “We need to stand up for that fact and make that fact plain. Let’s stop letting others dictate the conversation … We need to tell our own story, and I think, in a lot of ways, we have not done that.”
