This guy was part of a hate group; he now wants your vote
This may be Keith Alexander’s moment.
Alexander, 67, is a Republican. He’s running to become the next Shelby County property assessor – a job that can be an instrument to marginalize some communities while elevating others.
And, until recently, he belonged to a hate group.
My colleague, Marc Perrusquia, recently wrote that Alexander, who formerly co-hosted a radio show called, “The Political Cesspool,” was a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens.
The Southern Poverty Law Center categorizes the CCC as a white nationalist hate group.
Two years ago, after the host, James Edwards, called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a “dumpy, 5-foot-6, fat, greasy, white-hating Communist,” Alexander followed that by claiming that if King wasn’t being paid by Communists, he
Yet, if he ultimately wins that office, it won’t just be because of the racist and xenophobic tone set by President Trump. It will be because of the racist actions of the Tennessee Legislature.
would be preying on women in his congregation like other black ministers.
I’m guessing he never heard of Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart.
Alexander, who also was the GOP nominee for tax assessor in 2014, spewed this racism in a city where King was killed trying to rid the nation of it; in a place where people should be acting to end the racism that led to his murder rather than amplify it.
But he didn’t. And now he wants to be tax assessor.
Yet, if he ultimately wins that office, it won’t just be because of the racist and xenophobic tone set by President Trump. It will be because of the racist actions of the Tennessee Legislature. They paved the way. This year, these state lawmakers refused to support a resolution condemning Neo-Nazis but were adamant in their refusal to sign onto a resolution honoring local activist Tami Sawyer along with several other women - because she led the #TakeEmDown901 movement that led to the removal of Confederate monuments from Mem-
phis’ parks.
On top of that, they obsessed over the removal of the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and slave trader who was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and Confederacy president Jefferson Davis.
To top it off, the legislators recently tried to punish Memphis by refusing to give the city $250,000 to celebrate its bicentennial.
If lawmakers go through all that to preserve and defend the glorification of racist history – Alexander also said, on the radio show, that the statue protesters were bent on “destroying Western civilization and white heritage” – and penalize those who want to stop it, then it’s no wonder that someone like him would think his views wouldn’t hurt his chances to win a public office. But they should. While the tax assessor’s power in valuing property is limited by the Legislature, having someone with racist beliefs in that position should create some uneasiness – especially when, in the past, many white-dominated Southern counties used property taxes to intimidate black people during the civil rights movement.
A tax assessor may not be able to blatantly discriminate now, but what remains, as Andrew W. Kharl, an assistant history professor at Marquette University, found is a Jim Crow notion that black property owners should pay more in property taxes because they pay little in federal income taxes.
So, despite the safeguards, the tax assessor job is still one that shouldn’t be entrusted to a racist.
For his part, Alexander said he has severed ties with the CCC and the radio show.
But chances are he did that out of convenience and not conscience. In fact, conscience would have led him to avoid such ties in the first place.
Yet, given what’s been happening on the national and state front – from Trump calling Neo-Nazis “very fine people,” to state lawmakers refusing to condemn them - being connected to white supremacists and making racist remarks on the airwaves may not hurt Alexander in his bid for public office. In fact, it might even help him.
And that’s the real disgrace.