Dog Whistling DemocracyNC Calls African American Legislator a “Prop” for Supporting Voter ID

Racist “othering” of African American former senator Joel Ford follows implication from “social justice” group that Ford can’t speak for himself and earned his position through a corrupt bargain

Raleigh, N.C. — The left-wing activist group DemocracyNC this week publicly applied a dehumanizing label to former Sen. Joel Ford, who is African American, for possessing a political opinion different from their own.

The left-wing group called former Sen. Ford a “prop” for sponsoring a 2018 voter ID bill.

The race-tinged accusation came just one day after the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) attempted to smear former Sen. Ford by implying he earned his appointment to the UNC Board of Governors via a corrupt bargain and couldn’t speak for himself, relying instead on white Republicans.

SCSJ is in court this week to try to block the voter ID bill that Sen. Ford sponsored.

Sen. Bill Rabon (R-Brunswick) said, “These groups purport to fight against racism, yet in just two days they’ve dehumanized and ‘othered’ an accomplished African American former legislator for straying from their far-left orthodoxy.”

Sen. Rabon continued, “Anyone other than a blind ideologue would consider labeling a human being a ‘prop’ as dehumanizing. The racist character assassination that phony ‘social justice’ groups are launching against an African American former legislator, who is a good man, is despicable. When will people start seeing through their act, which uses race relations as a veil to advance their far-left ideology?”

Lawyers for SCSJ also tried to belittle Sen. Ford during trial this week for working with a staff member for Senate leadership to draft an op-ed about his position on voter ID. It is common practice for legislators to work with staff on first drafts of public communications.

The lawyers implied that Sen. Ford was incapable of thinking or speaking for himself, calling out a passage in the op-ed that read: “I have always been my own man with my own thoughts and my own opinions.”

The lawyer badgered Sen. Ford for several minutes, at one point asking, “If we look back at [the draft op-ed], that language about you being your own man with your thoughts and your own opinions, that came directly out of [the staffer’s] draft, right?”

Sen. Ford again repeated what he’d said multiple times, “That came from my words…I’ve always been my own man with my own thoughts and my own opinions. Those are my words.”

The attack on an African American legislator is reminiscent of a website created by Democratic Party groups to shame “Disloyal Dems” who didn’t tow the party line.

In 2019, the Democratic Party-aligned groups launched the “Disloyal Dems” website to publicly shame legislators who didn’t buy into the agenda set by the governor and state party chair, both of whom were white men.

At one time, every legislator listed on the Disloyal Dems website was black.