David Hogg's White Tears, Explained

The controversy over the DNC election is a perfect example of media bias, the Democratic Party's white problem and why everyone hates DEI

(Screenshot/MSNBC)

I shouldn’t write about Jim Clyburn.

I know Jim Clyburn. My late uncle and longtime NAACP activist, Isaac Williams (who served an even lengthier term as my father’s brother), successfully led Clyburn’s campaign to become the first Black South Carolinian in Congress since 1897. My mother and Clyburn were both students at an all-Black boarding school founded to educate children of the formerly enslaved. He’s helped my family members secure more than $2 million for two museums focused on African American history. As members of the same fraternity (Omega Psi Phi) and distant cousins, the rules of journalistic integrity say I shouldn’t write about Clyburn.

This article is not about Jim Clyburn.

This article is about Black culture versus caucasity. It’s about diversity, equity and inclusion versus white tears. It’s about Black people’s problems with the Democratic Party and white people’s problems with democracy. Jim Clyburn is not involved, but this story is about a white boy disrespecting an old Black man.

More than anything, this story is about David Hogg.

Who is David Hogg? Is he related to the villain from “The Dukes of Hazzard”?

David Hogg is a 25-year-old Democrat who couldn’t carry Jim Clyburn’s jock strap with a wheelbarrow and two more white boys.

As a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., during the 2018 school shooting, Hogg was “thrust into the world of activism” during the subsequent March For Our Lives protests against gun violence. He made headlines when video surfaced of the Wicked Witch of West Georgia, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), harassing the then-19-year-old Hogg on video.

Hogg also co-founded Leaders We Deserve, a “grassroots organization dedicated to electing young progressives to Congress and State Legislatures across the country to help defeat the far-right agenda and advance a progressive vision for the future.”

On Feb. 1, Hogg was one of three candidates elected to serve as vice chairs of the DNC.

Wait … why does an old-school hip-hop group need a vice chairperson? Did Hogg replace Rev. Simmons?

I’m sorry, this has nothing to do with Run-DMC. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the official organization of the Democratic Party, and the vice chairs are essentially the leadership team. If the DNC’s chair is the CEO, then the vice chairs are the board members. Hogg serves alongside Artie Blanco, a Latina, and 34-year-old Malcolm Kenyatta, the first openly gay Black man elected to the Pennsylvania legislature.

After taking his seat, Hogg was asked to sign a “neutrality pledge.” Basically, anyone in a leadership role is supposed to remain neutral on the party’s political candidates. If two Democrats seek the same seat, the party is not supposed to put its thumb on the scale. While neutrality is antithetical to Hogg’s entire mission, it's not like he was forced to serve as vice chair because he was a first-round pick in the Democratic Party draft lottery; he volunteered for the role.

But while he is not related to Boss Hogg, he is white, so the rules don’t apply to him.

Hogg refused.

What does it have to do with Jim Clyburn?

The Democrats’ new, young, diverse leadership team signaled a change from old-head Democratic power brokers like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. However, during a recent appearance on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, Hogg angered many Black Democratic voters.

Apparently intoxicated from inhaling white, liberal, know-it-all secondhand smugness from Bill Maher, Hogg mentioned a few Democrats who need to “get over themselves” and retire from public service.

How is that racist? He didn’t even say anything about Clyburn!

No one said it was racist, but everyone knew he was talking about Clyburn.

A few days earlier, the South Carolina congressman told the Wall Street Journal: “Nancy left her seat. Steny left his seat. I left my seat. What the hell I’m supposed to do now? What do you want— me to give up my life?”

To Democrats who wear Daisy Dukes in front of their grandmothers and call their parents by their first names, Hogg’s outspokenness is just what the party needs. And, to be fair, many Black Democrats agree with the substance of Hogg’s argument — that the Democratic Party needs newer, younger leaders. But whether it is staying in “a child’s place” or engaging in “grown folks’ business,” there is one universal rule in the Black diaspora:

“Respect your elders.”

— Raheem’s Rules of Order

Even Bakari Sellers (who was elected to the S.C. legislature when he was 22 years old) tweeted that Hogg throwing shade at an 84-year-old Black man was a little disrespectful.

So when the Democratic Party voided the election that gave Hogg a leadership position, white mainstream journalism outfits claimed that the Democratic Party “ousted” Hogg because he posed a threat to the party establishment. Even worse, Hogg helped push this baseless narrative.

Over the past few weeks, Hogg has appeared on radio, television shows and podcasts, many of them led by Black hosts and political commentators. Interestingly, he seemed to specifically avoid people with backgrounds in actual journalism and did nothing to dispel the rumors that the DNC was retaliating against him for being outspoken and not signing the neutrality pledge.

“Today, the DNC took its first steps to remove me from my position as Vice Chair At-Large,” Hogg said in a statement. “While this vote was based on how the DNC conducted its officers’ elections, which I had nothing to do with, it is also impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party which loomed large over this vote… The DNC has pledged to remove me, and this vote has provided an avenue to fast-track that effort.”

This is a lie.

You’ve already admitted you’re biased against Boss Hogg. How do you know he’s wrong?

Journalism.

To get a clear understanding of what happened, ContrabandCamp spoke with Democratic Party officials on and off the record. We also obtained a transcript of the vote and the official DNC credentials challenge that sparked the redo (which was filed on Feb. 24, before Hogg was asked to sign the pledge.)

What emerged was an age-old tale of media bias, hubris and why so many white people think DEI is a personal attack on “meritocracy.”

So why was Hogg’s election voided?

Well, the first thing you should know is that it was not “Hogg’s election.”

Although his statement would lead you to assume that the entire Democratic Party decided that they had to do something about this brave, rebellious white boy, the DNC did not decide to “remove Hogg from his position.” The party simply chose to redo the election for two DNC vice chairs.

Why, though?

DEI.

Explain, please.

According to the DNC’s bylaws:

In the election of the three remaining Vice Chairpersons, provision will be made to elect the appropriate number of persons of each gender to ensure that, with the exception of the National Chairperson and the President of the Association of State Democratic Committees (“ASDC”), the officers shall be as equally divided as practicable according to gender in accordance with Article 3, Section 1(e) of the Charter. In the case of gender non-binary candidates and Officers, they shall not be counted as either a male or female, and the remainder of the Officer positions shall be equally divided. At the discretion of the Chair, voting for each Vice Chairperson position will be conducted one at a time among all candidates of the appropriate gender

What does all that mean?

Basically, if there are two open positions and one is filled by a man, the other position should be filled by an equally qualified woman and vice versa. In this case, there were three open vice chairperson positions with six candidates. Aside from Hogg, Kenyatta and Blanco, the other candidates were:

• Shasti Conrad, an Indian American woman who was Washington state Democratic Party’s youngest chairperson,

• Kalyn Free, a Native American woman from Oklahoma, and

• Jeanna Repass, a Black woman from Kansas.

In the first round of voting, Blanco, a woman, won. So, according to the rules, there should have been two more rounds of votes:

• Round 2: Hogg vs. Kenyatta

• Round 3: Free, Repass, Conrad and the loser of Hogg vs. Kenyatta

Instead, the chairperson held one vote and the top two vote-getters were elected vice chair. Had the election been conducted by the rules, it is possible that one of the women candidates could have been elected. But in this case, Free and Repass were essentially disenfranchised.

“There was an unfortunate procedural error,” explained Jaime Harrison, the former DNC chair who conducted the vote. “I think the party determined that this was the fairest and most democratic way to remediate the situation.”

So what is Hogg’s argument?

That’s the entire point. He doesn’t have an argument. Aside from the women, there is only one other person who has a legitimate gripe:

Although Kenyatta actually won more votes, somehow, Hogg has controlled the media narrative and made himself the victim. Apparently, Hogg thinks he deserves to be declared the winner of an election that he did not win.

Make it make sense!

Hogg is a pristine example of what’s wrong with the Democratic Party's white leadership. He is an avatar for the white people who believe they know what’s better for Black people more than actual, real-life Black people. And none of this means that the substance of Hogg’s argument is wrong. Like a lot of white Democrats who share the same political goals, Hogg is disrespectful to the party’s most loyal constituency. Because if a 25-year-old white boy told my 84-year-old grandfather to “get over himself,” he’d need a microscope to find the shards of his teeth.

But the blame does not exclusively belong to Hogg. It belongs to the media that accepted his narrative without talking to the Black woman who was disenfranchised or the Black man who actually had more votes or the Native American and the Indian American woman who actually filed the challenge.

There is only one reason why any outlet would cast this story as an injustice to the least-experienced, least-qualified person who has never held a position in the party.

Then again, there is only one reason why anyone would allow a 25-year-old white boy with no experience to say “Fuck all those Black people who voted for Jim Clyburn. They don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Let me tell you why those dumb negroes are wrong.”

What’s the reason?

Here’s a story.

One night, I was outside of an event in Cincinnati when a man struck up a conversation. When he found out where I was born and raised, his face lit up as he told me that he was also from South Carolina. Always the journalist, I am fascinated by migration stories. I asked him how the hell he got to Cincinnati from Charleston, S.C.

He lit his cigar and told me a story that began before he was born.

In 1969, shortly after the Orangeburg Massacre — one of the most violent events of the Civil Rights Movement — a group of Black South Carolina hospital workers went on strike. In response, South Carolina’s governor created the S.C. Human Affairs Commission to fight discrimination in the state government and placed one of the activists, a high school history teacher, in charge of the agency. As the man who was literally responsible for fighting all of the racism in the state, everyone knew you could just walk into his office and he could fix anything.

“I knew it too,” the guy said as he puffed on his cigar. “I don’t know how I knew, because I was bad as hell. But I had heard about ‘the office’ since I was a kid.”

He explained that when he was a teenager, he was apprehended by a Black police officer stealing from a store. But since the police officer was Black, the officer took him to “the office.” As punishment, he had to work for the racism commissioner for an entire year and bring every report card by “the office.” By the time the teenager graduated from high school, he had planned to go into the Army, but the man in the office had another idea:

A full scholarship to the University of Cincinnati.

“When I finished college, I got a job here, and I’ve been here ever since,” he said.

“Can I ask what you do for a living?” I inquired.

“I was a history teacher,“ he replied. “I’m a principal, now. And if you ask anyone who knows me, I always keep my office door open … Just like Jim Clyburn.”

I did not tell him that I know Jim Clyburn.

I stay out of grown folks’ business.