“North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the state’s first Black lieutenant governor and the GOP front-runner for the 2024 gubernatorial race, repeatedly lambasted the ‘so-called’ 1960s Civil Rights Movement, lamenting that ‘so many freedoms were lost during the civil rights movement,’” CNN reported here.
In a way, he’s right. White people lost the “freedom” to ride segregated buses, sit at segregated lunch counters, swim in segregated pools, live in segregated neighborhoods, send their children to segregated schools, and elect public officials without input from black voters.
It’s difficult to understand why Robinson thinks that way, though. Growing up in North Carolina, he was a victim of the old ways, and benefitted from expanded opportunities for black people. What’s clear, though, is that his thinking is heavily influenced by a very screwed up childhood. His father was a violent drunk, his parents frequently fought, and he spent part of his childhood in foster care.
A local TV station said (here), “Robinson isn’t the stiff conservative of the 1980s and 1990s hyper-focused on budgets and tax policy. Rather, he forcefully speaks out on social issues. Abortion, gay rights and limiting discussions about racism and sexuality in schools are central to his messaging,” which is completely in line with where the GOP stands today on social issues: He’s an anti-LGBQT, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic bigot.
He also has very odd ideas about freedom. He’s a book-burner who wants to ban science education from elementary schools, and abolish separation of church and state.
Robinson is an improbable candidate. He had no political experience being elected to North Carolina’s second-highest state office in 2020. He came to prominence by being outspoken for gun rights. Until then, he was just a guy who dropped out of a historically-black college, worked in furniture factories, then went back to school (at a desegregated state university) with the aim of becoming a history teacher (read his bio here).
Today, he describes himself as a “culture warrior.” His focus dovetails neatly with that of the Republican Party nationally, which has shifted its attention from the political sphere to remaking American society in its ideological image, from what’s taught in schools to controlling adults’ private lives. Along the way, they’re striving to sweep aside the freedoms standing in their way.
The Civil Rights Movement created greater freedom for millions of black Americans. Robinson, a black man who evolved into a Republican culture warrior, thinks the whole thing was a big mistake.