Donald Trump fired Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve board, then posed in an Oval Office photo with mostly white officials. Observers link the firing and the image to a larger pattern of sidelining diverse voices and mainstreaming white nationalist perspectives. Critics assert the move aims to control the Federal Reserve and undermine its independence. Cook was an accomplished economist with Harvard and Michigan State affiliations, degrees from Oxford and Spelman, and research on racial discrimination's economic effects, and she advised Nigerian and Rwandan governments. Her 2022 Senate confirmation was partisan, with Republicans questioning her qualifications.
For those who have studied the US president's long and troubling history of racism, the two events were more than mere coincidence. They were indicative of a man who has recently brought white nationalist perspectives from the margins back to the mainstream. Trump has vehemently denied that he is a racist, pointing to a modest increase in support among African American voters in last year's election, when his opponent was a Black woman.
Cook taught economics and international relations at Michigan State University, and was previously on the faculty of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She was a Marshall scholar who received degrees from Oxford University and Spelman College, a historically Black women's college in Atlanta. Cook dedicated much of her scholarship to examining how racial discrimination and targeted violence created barriers to economic advancement for African Americans. She also advised the Nigerian and Rwandan governments on banking reforms and economic development.
He chose to fire her out of all the governors because she's a Black woman, said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the organisation Black Voters Matter. His goal is to get control of the Federal Reserve and for that to no longer be an autonomous, independent body. But what he does recognise is that in America everything is about race. It is as lethal as a nuclear bomb.
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