The volatile mix of race and politics has been around for a long, long time throughout American history. In the past, it usually meant that White politicians passing laws to exclude minority groups from full participation in American social institutions. But as CBS News reports, this time around, the controversy has been turned around -- many Blacks in a Tennessee district feel that a White U.S. Representative could never adequately represent their interests, based almost entirely on the fact that he is White, not Black:

When Steve Cohen, a white man, was elected last year to represent mostly black Memphis in Congress, it was seen as a sign that racial divisions were fading in the city. But less than a year later, Cohen is facing a movement led by black pastors and political activists to defeat him in 2008 and send a black representative to Washington instead. . . .

Emotions around Cohen’s abilities to represent his district have flared over the last week since Cohen spoke at a meeting of the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association, a group of black ministers that has more than 400 members. Cohen wanted to address concerns that had been expressed by the black religious community over his support for a federal hate crimes bill that protects gays.

The meeting quickly turned adversarial, with some of the audience jeering and booing the freshman congressman with complaints that a white politician could not represent the concerns of a predominantly black district. “He’s not black, and he can’t represent me. That’s the bottom line,” the Rev. Robert Poindexter told the Memphis Commercial Appeal after the meeting.

Some of the black preachers were worried that the hate crimes bill could make them legally responsible if they preached against homosexuality and someone who heard the sermon went out and committed a hate crime. Some also regard homosexuality as a sinful choice and object to gays being grouped with blacks for legal protection. Cohen said his predecessor, Harold Ford Jr., who is black, drew no such criticism when he supported similar hate-crime legislation.

I see this particular controversy as being very similar to the debate regarding the sculptor for the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington DC that I wrote about earlier. In both cases, the African American community is upset over the fact that a particular person who is seen as trying to “represent” them is not African American like them.

As I wrote in that previous post, on the one hand I can understand their argument. Not only have African Americans have been underrepresented in so many facets of the American political system for so long, but that most of the time, White politicians were using the political system to continue racially oppressing their community. In that sense, it is certainly understandable that they would want “one of their own” to be in that Representative’s seat.

On the other hand, it’s similar to the argument that a person can only fully understand and sympathize with someone who has cancer if s/he also has cancer him/herself -- an argument that I completely reject as superficial and unrealistic. I once again invoke the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he said that people should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character -- and in this case, their actions.

If the African American community in Memphis or anywhere else wants to oust a particular politician for not supporting their values and issues, that’s fine and that’s what we call democracy. But when the only reason to oust someone is because his/her racial identity does not match yours, even though the representative has done a good job in supporting your interests, that is only the worst example of divisive identity politics.