Race-Baiting and the New ‘Willie Horton’ Ad

By Chidike Okeem

Last week, the National Republican Congressional Committee released an ad featuring a black felon named Nikko Jenkins. The ad was released in an effort to attack Democratic congressional candidate Brad Ashford’s soft-on-crime policies and to potentially stymie his bid to represent Nebraska’s second congressional district. However, the ad is exceedingly problematic, inasmuch as it helps to cement the already popular narrative of Republican tone-deafness on issues of race and ethnicity.