If You Want To Vent Your Racism On Facebook, Maybe You Shouldn't Run For Congress

They all look the same to me; which one is Mark Walker?

After the North Carolina Republican primary runoff last month, many people were stunned by what happened in NC-06 (think Mayberry), where a heavy Establishment favorite, Phil Berger's son, Phil, Jr., was defeated by fringe right-wing extremist, Baptist Choral Pastor/gun nut Mark Walker. As we explained at the time, Walker is a Science denier who wants to abolish the minimum wage and raise the Social Security retirement age to 70. And Walker is not just anti-choice, but believes women who are the victims of rape or incest should be forced by the government to give birth to the child of her rapist. Walker wants to defund Planned Parenthood, and enthusiastically supports a so-called "personhood amendment" to the constitution, which would ban common forms of birth control. Everything about him reeks of statism and Big Government interfering in the private lives of regular working families.

What we didn't get into is his virulent racism. No one has come up with a photo of Walker running around in a KKK costume yet but… Facebook is forever. Thursday's High Point Enterprise shared a shockingly racist perspective with the bigoted pastor from his Facebook page.

In the post from April 2013 about families dependent on government assistance and African-Americans, Walker writes that “these Americans have no concept of the pride and joy when we, as parents, invest in our children.” In referring to meeting with a black male who grew up in an inner city, Walker-- who is white-- continues that government programs “strip away the essence of what God created him to be.”

Fjeld and Democratic Party leaders in North Carolina pounced on the comments, which gained national attention in political circles when they were highlighted by the online magazine Slate.

"The fact that Mr. Walker could say that African-American parents don't take pride in investing in their children reflects how out of touch he is with the working families in our district and state. Words like those are just plain wrong," Fjeld said.


State Rep. Alma Adams, D-Guilford, the Democratic nominee for the 12th Congressional District, said the sentiment in the Facebook post is insensitive.


“In today’s political climate it’s important to understand that we need leaders who understand the needs of all of our citizens and not make assumptions about people based on their race,” Adams said.


“Mark Walker’s comments are not only false but insensitive and insulting,” said Yvonne Johnson, a Greensboro City Council member and former Greensboro mayor.
Walker acknowledged Thursday that his Facebook post wasn’t as articulate as it could have been.

In his post Walker said there are exceptions to African American parents who don't raise their children to fit the right-wing model and he cited the mother of reactionary icon Ben Carson. So generous of Walker! As Howard Chubbs, pastor of the Greensboro's Providence Baptist Church pointed out, "Walker has no concept of our community." On his campaign website, Walker makes it clear that he's running for Congress because he thinks government needs to dictate a right-wing political agenda to families. It isn't any different from the platform Nazis ran on in German in the 1930s: "The breakdown of the American family is a tragic result of a systematic moral devastation. This travesty, created by our government, translates into many other problematic areas within our culture." The primary difference was that the Nazis' main target was the Jews; Walker's is African-Americans.

Fjeld will debate Walker on Fox-8 (WGHP) on October 29. Even if the DCCC is studiously ignoring the race, it's important to remember that Democrats hold a registration advantage in NC-06 and that Kay Hagen won the district in 2008. With someone as extreme as Walker in the race, advocating profoundly unAmerican ideas and a kind of right-wing radicalism that even scares many Republicans, this is a district a vaguely competent DCCC would have on the top of its target list. Alas, that isn't the case this cycle. Maybe Fjeld can do it on her own.

One of the sharpest political minds in the area belongs to Danielle Adams, a young progressive who was elected Durham County Soil & Water District Supervisor. I know Danielle from the People for the American Way's Young Elected Officials network. She's very much in touch with the deep agricultural roots that so many of the voters in NC-06 have and I asked her about Walker's diatribe on Facebook. This is what she told me a few hours ago:

Mr. Walker's post shows not only a lack of understanding of the communities around him but a severe lack of judgement and a very deep level of social and political ignorance that cannot be tolerated of a candidate seeking to serve in the United States House of Representatives.

He shows a lack of awareness of the government programs that systematically oppressed women and minorities while providing the privileges and comforts he now enjoys.

I take personal offense to his comments as a young black woman whose parents worked hard, went to four year universities and worked sometimes two jobs at a time, to ensure that my brothers and I could enjoy the America promised to us.

My parents, and their parents, and the previous generations of strong black and brown parents who served in our military, fought in American wars, worked as teachers, domestic workers, farmers and slaves, took enormous pride and joy in not only investing in, but sacrificing for their children. I am the product of that.

Saying that the entitlement programs of the 60s, to black and brown people have taught us "...to believe that the federal government is designed to provide for every aspect, need or want, of their lives" is one of the biggest falsehoods out there. It is incumbent on any person running for office in our nation to understand the history of entitlements before making egregious blanket judgement on the constituents they purport to want serve. Mr. Walker could use an education based in reality, not privilege.

That's an authentic 21st Century North Carolina voice. Walker may be using Facebook, but his perspective is straight out of the 18th Century.