Why would Ted Cruz, the Republican Senator from Texas, think he’s in a position to authoritatively speak about the aims and work of the NAACP?
After the organization, which advocates for the civil rights of Black Americans, recently issued what was termed a travel advisory warning its followers about potential transit to Florida, Cruz piped up. “In the 1950s & 1960s, the NAACP did extraordinary good helping lead the civil rights movement,” he wrote in a Twitter post. “Today, Dr. King would be ashamed of how profoundly they’ve lost their way.”
In theory, the late civil rights leader to whom Cruz referred would probably be ashamed of the Texas Senator’s support for blocking the certification in Congress of electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election that represented the choices for president made by millions and millions of people, including marginalized communities like some Black Americans. (Pennsylvania was a state often targeted in that time, and Philadelphia County has a population that is nearly 44 percent Black, according to QuickFacts data from the U.S. Census Bureau.) Even after Congress gathered back in the Capitol to finalize the certification process after the Trump-inspired rioters were removed, Cruz stuck with his support of the challenges to Biden’s win, no matter how securely documented it really was.
“What my father would be deeply concerned about is the harmful, discriminatory legislation in Florida,” Bernice King, a daughter of the civil rights icon, remarked in reply to the Senator. She included an image of her father. The NAACP tied its warning about traveling to Florida to some of the attempts by that state’s GOP Governor Ron DeSantis and his Republican allies to restrict access to basic information about the experiences of Black Americans in Florida schools. Read more here.
What my father would be deeply concerned about is the harmful, discriminatory legislation in Florida. https://t.co/7ivUmEqgPH pic.twitter.com/OXKo0Q5jC3
— Be A King (@BerniceKing) May 22, 2023
