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Surprise, surprise.
Republicans are attacking yet another one of President Joe Biden’s Black female nominees for a key government position. This time, their disgust is aimed one of Biden’s latest picks to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the powerful panel of economists that regulates America’s financial institutions.
Republicans have waged a racist smear campaign against economist Lisa Cook ahead of Thursday's confirmation hearings. If confirmed by the Senate, Cook would be the first Black woman to serve on the board in its 108-year history.
Cook is a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University. She earned a degree in economics, politics and philosophy from Oxford University and a doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses heavily on racial and gender inequality.
Nonetheless, despite her experience (or, in my view, because of that experience) multiple Republicans have suggested Cook is unqualified to serve on the board. Their statements echo conservative claims about the Black women on Biden's list of potential Supreme Court nominees.
- Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., called Cook “fundamentally not qualified” to serve.
- Conservative columnist John Cochrane wrote that Cook could only be considered qualified “if the job is to bring the Administration and progressive supporters’ racial policies to the Fed.”
- Peter Navarro, one of former President Donald Trump's disgraced former advisers, claimed Cook would be a “race-based appointment” to the board. “Professor Cook is more qualified to coach an NFL team than manage what may be a looming collapse of our economy from a perch at the Fed,” said Navarro, whose White House communications are of interest to the House Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot.
A quick glance at Cook’s published writings will tell you all you need to know about why Republicans oppose her confirmation. The party currently engaged in a nationwide effort to suppress lessons about racism is unsurprisingly opposed to an economist who wrote that "racism impoverishes the whole economy" in a 2020 opinion piece in The New York Times.
And at a time when the Federal Reserve is considering strategies to reduce inflation, including hiking interest rates and curbing people’s ability to spend, Cook’s consideration for how such economic policies may affect marginalized groups is a danger to Republicans who couldn’t care less.
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