Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been justifiably lambasted by journalists, in Newsmax, the New York Post, and many other conservative forums, for demagogically playing the race and gender cards during her recent disastrous reelection campaign.
But Mayor Lightfoot's odious slanders, that pervasive racism and sexism prevent Black American women from attaining prestigious leadership positions, have remained unrefuted.
In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, three days before the Feb. 28 election, the 60-year-old Mayor Lightfoot, who was lagging in the polls, tendentiously declared that "I'm a Black woman, let's not forget. Certain folks, frankly, don't support us in leadership roles."
This syntactic sleight of hand — from herself to all Black women – totally contradicts Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous, actualized "1963 Dream," that his young two daughters and two sons will be judged by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin.
Double-downing on election evening, Mayor Lightfoot, when asked by a reporter if she had been treated unfairly, replied that "I'm a Black woman in America. Of course."
But one devastating, contemporaneous refutation of Lightfoot's double-barreled demagoguery occurred four months ago in Los Angeles, where Karen Bass, the Black Democratic congresswoman, was elected mayor, soundly defeating Rick Caruso, a White billionaire businessman, 510,000 votes to 420,000.
Significantly, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that Los Angeles had 3,849,000 residents in 2021, of whom 9% are Black; 48% are Hispanic; 28% non-Hispanic White; and 12% Asian. Obviously, Lightfoot's unidentified, bigoted "folks," who reject Black women in leadership positions, aren't running rampant in the nation's second most populous city.
Moreover, Chicago is America's third-largest city, with 2,697,000 residents, of whom 29% each are Black or Hispanic, 33% non-Hispanic White, and 7% Asian. In the Windy City's neighborhoods where the majority of residents are either Whites, Hispanics or Asians, Lightfoot's support last month ranged between a paltry 6% and 9%.
In the city's majority Black neighborhoods, while the mayor received 38% of total votes, two other Black candidates, Willie Wilson and Brandon Johnson, combined for 40%.
And in neighborhoods where none of the four groups represents a majority of residents, Lightfoot finished fourth, with a piddling 14% of the vote.
In short, Mayor Lightfoot, who received just 17% of the total vote and failed to advance to the April 4 runoff, was overwhelmingly repudiated by the city's intelligent, fair-minded, wonderfully diverse voters.
Another demolition of Mayor Lightfoot's despicable aspersions can be found in the current grassroots movement to recall New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell, the Black Democratic woman in office since 2018.
When a mayoral spokesperson inflammatorily claimed that the recall effort was a "Republican-backed maneuver ... [to] undermine and discredit the first Black woman mayor of New Orleans," Eileen Carter, the vice chairwoman of the recall campaign and a former member of the Cantrell administration, effectively counter-punched.
"Their narrative is what is playing across America," Carter told Fox News. "It's the easiest one. It's the race card. She's a Black woman. I'm a Black woman. I live in the city. I want to be safe."
In addition to Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans, three other of America's largest cities currently have a Black Democratic woman mayor: No. 17, Charlotte, North Carolina, Vi Lyles; No. 18, San Francisco, California, London Breed; and No. 21, Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser.
Furthermore, other highly successful, extraordinarily powerful Black women in America in 2023 include judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who last year was confirmed by the Senate for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2021, Winsome Sears, the 59-year-old daughter of Jamaican immigrants and a Marine Corps veteran, was elected lieutenant governor of Virginia. But Lt. Gov. Sears is the only Republican Black woman currently holding a prominent elective office in America.
In fact, of the 52 Black American women who have been elected as voting members of Congress, only one, Mia Love, is a Republican. The 47-year-old daughter of Haitian immigrants represented a Utah district between 2015 and 2018.
In 2020, Sen. Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, became the first Black woman elected vice president of the United States.
And in 1992, in Lightfoot's Illinois, 45-year-old Democrat Carol Moseley Braun became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
But with consummate hypocrisy, Democrats and the Liberal Media ruthlessly vilify the very small group of Black American male or female politicians who are Republicans, because they are traumatized that members of their most loyal voting bloc have started switching to the Republicans.
Another very powerful refutation of Mayor Lori Lightfoot's racial and gender demagoguery is the millions of Black men and women, who for more than a century have immigrated to America, first from the Caribbean, and beginning in the mid-1960s, from Africa.
Indeed, the first Black woman to serve in Congress, Shirley Chisholm, was elected to represent a Brooklyn district in 1968. She was born in New York City in 1924, to a father who had emigrated from British Guiana and a mother from Barbados.
Undoubtedly, in the third decade of the 21st century, and despite Mayor Lightfoot's rancid rabble-rousing, Black American women are highly-accomplished, highly-placed, highly-educated and highly-respected.
Mark Schulte is a retired New York City schoolteacher and mathematician who has written extensively about science and the history of science. Read Mark Schulte's Reports — More Here.
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