‘This is even worse.’ NC GOP slammed for racist ‘pimp’ tweet about Rev. William Barber
A Thursday tweet by the North Carolina Republican Party is under fire for calling the Rev. William Barber II a “poverty pimp.”
Barber was traveling to Durham Thursday in the first of three stops on a tour with Sen. Bernie Sanders, dubbed the “Rally to Raise the Wage” campaign, and meant to call for raising the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour over five years.
The tweet read: “Socialist Bernie Sanders is teaming up with poverty pimp William Barber to hold a rally with NC Democrats in Durham today. While @NCDemParty embraces Sanders’ push to make us more like his beloved USSR, Republicans work to protect the good old timeless values of the USA.”
After the longtime North Carolina pastor and activist responded on Twitter Thursday night, telling his followers to “never fall to the diversion,” he gave a fuller response to The News & Observer Friday while on his way to the second rally, in Nashville, Tenn.
He said the remark was a familiar tactic by strategists who would rather hurl insults than discuss issues. He said he plans to write to the party to invite whoever penned the unsigned tweet to sit down and talk.
“I’d like to meet,” Barber told The N&O. “I want to talk about North Carolinians, about the fact that 2 million people in this state make less than a living wage. I want to talk about all the people who don’t have health insurance and die because of it.”
If he meets the author of the tweet, Barber said he’ll bring along copies of the Bible and the North Carolina and U.S. constitutions.
“Over and over again, the Scriptures tell us not just as individuals, but as a government, we’re supposed to care for the least of these,” he said.
“I’m not interested in a Twitter fight, or calling folk names,” Barber said. “People are dying. Poverty is killing people. We can’t afford to ignore this.”
A call and email to NCGOP spokesperson Jeff Moore were not returned Thursday afternoon. The tweet remained online Friday afternoon, despite calls to remove it.
Democrats react to tweet about Barber
Many Democrats responded to the tweet on Twitter.
Jonah Garson, the first vice chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, called the tweet a “dog whistle” and “racist BS.”
State Sen. Michael Garrett wrote that the tweet was “beneath the dignity of our state’s public discourse.”
In an interview, House Minority Leader Robert Reives, a Goldston Democrat, was infuriated.
“There are only a few terms they could have picked that would have been more demeaning,” he told The N&O.
“It’s incredibly diminishing of his work. It’s amazing they could reduce all his work to one of the most diminishing terms that could be used for Black men in this country’s history,” he said. “I would say this is even worse than Jeff McNeely’s comments.”
He was referring to a comment made May 17 by state Rep. Jeff McNeely, a Republican from Stony Point. While speaking on the House floor, McNeely, who is white, asked Democratic state Rep. Abe Jones, who is Black, if he would have succeeded at Harvard University had he not been “an athlete or a minority.” Last week, McNeely resigned from his House leadership position due to his comments.
Reives told The News & Observer Thursday to “emphasize how angry I am,” he described the usage of the word “pimp” as “pointed and racist.”
The Twitter remark may have been a reference to Barber’s methods of motivating people to press for change. Barber’s two organizations — the Poor People’s Campaign and Repairers of the Breach — advocate for social and economic justice across the country.
In his work as co-founder of the National Poor People’s Campaign, Barber has traveled the country leading rallies to draw attention to government policies and practices he says help put and keep people in poverty.
Barber frequently cites statistics showing that 140 million people in the U.S. are considered poor or low-income.
At most of his rallies, local volunteers and advocacy groups identify individuals in their areas who are struggling and bring them onstage to briefly tell their stories. Their two-minute testimonies, which Barber helps keep on point, give the rallies the feel of an evangelical church service and put human faces on joblessness, low wages, lack of access to health care, decent housing and higher education.
He followed the same format at a rally on the State Capitol grounds in April, marking the 10-year anniversary of his Moral Monday campaign.
On Thursday, Barber and Sanders were joined in Durham by Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam. In a reaction to the NCGOP tweet, Allam tagged a “Racism Watchdog” Twitter account and included a GIF of a dog barking.
Barber’s background
After about 10 years as president of the North Carolina NAACP, Barber rose to national fame for promoting the tenets of his Moral Monday Movement: a series of peaceful protests that urged lawmakers to reject what Barber called regressive and extremist policies.
In 2022, after decades leading Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, Barber retired from his pastoral post to launch the new Center for Public Theology and Public Policy Yale Divinity School.
Barber graduated from North Carolina Central University in 1985 with a degree in political science and later got his master’s degree from Duke Divinity School before earning a doctorate in ministry from Drew University’s theological school in Madison, New Jersey.
This story was originally published June 1, 2023 at 4:51 PM.
