On Thursday, National Newspaper Publishers Association columnist Julianne Malveaux wrote that Marco Rubio, along with two Asian-American Senators, one Hispanic Senator, and two black Senate candidates are all in fact white men.
Malveaux, also the president of Bennett College, decried the travails of Kendrick Meek, the black Democrat vying for his party's nomination for US Senate in Florida. "If Meek can’t pull this one off," Malveaux wrote, "the United States Senate will become, again, a segregated body." She also used the terms "lily-white" and "all-white" to describe the racial makeup of a Meek-less Senate.
Readers must be forgiven for their confusion, given that another candidate for Senate in Florida, Marco Rubio, is not white, but Hispanic. In fact, excluding Roland Burris, Illinois's lame duck junior Senator, the Senate has three non-white members: Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka of Hawaii are both of Asian descent, and Robert Menendez is of Hispanic descent.
There are also black Senate candidates beyond Meek: Alvin Greene in South Carolina, and the less-known but infinitely more qualified Georgia Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond.
How to explain Malveaux's bizarre contention? Your guess is as good as ours.
