Another day, another reason to be elated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This time the newly sworn-in congresswoman – who in a matter of weeks has reshaped the political conversation in her own party and a country hit by the longest government shutdown in US history – aims squarely at CBS News. For its lack of black journalists.
Tweeting to her 2.4 million followers, Ocasio-Cortez wrote: “This [White House] admin has made having a functional understanding of race in America one of the most important core competencies for a political journalist to have, yet CBS News hasn’t assigned a *single* black journalist to cover the 2020 election.” In true AOC style – bold, snappy, forthright, instantly meme-able – she added: “Unacceptable in 2019. Try again.”
Before we wade into the response with the defiance of a student paying homage to The Breakfast Club on a college roof, let’s unpick this further. Ocasio-Cortez was responding to a CBS News producer revealing its team covering the 2020 US presidential campaign. Asian, Arab-American and Latino journalists were included, but no black reporter. This matters, not because of some facile quota system that says we need one of each race or it’s not true representation. It matters because a functional understanding of race is central to US (and indeed UK) politics. And when the conspicuously absent race happens to be the one discriminated against and weaponised the most, that tells us something, too.
This is why we need people in power, and holding power to account, who know about the complexities of race through lived experience. And it’s why it takes someone like Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican, to notice, understand and call it out. But oh, how the establishment loathes it when such truths are spoken. Especially by a bright young woman who the right are so obsessed by (ie fear) that Fox News spent more than two hours covering her first five days in Congress.
The response is always some predictable shade of defensiveness. The politics editor of the National Journal, Josh Kraushaar, wrote: “Another thing AOC has in common with Trump: media scold.” He went on: “If there aren’t strict racial quotas for every batch of hires, does it mean a company is racist?” To which Ocasio-Cortez patiently explained: “Do you understand how fundamental the black experience is to American politics? One race isn’t substitutable for another. It’s not about ‘quotas’. It’s about understanding the country you’re living in.”
A recent New York Times op-ed describes Ocasio-Cortez as “a potent symbol for a diversifying Democratic party: a young woman of colour who is giving as good as she gets in a political system that has rarely rewarded people who look like her.” Like Barack Obama, Ocasio-Cortez did not choose to be a symbol, but who she is will always count as much as what she says. And, so far, what she says is thrilling.
