Ludmya “Mia” Love was the first Black Republican woman and first Haitian American elected to Congress. She recently died at the age of 49 from an aggressive form of brain cancer. Love is being remembered as a principled politician and an ardent champion of traditional conservative values.
She represented Utah’s 4th Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 2015-2019. However, Love is best remembered for the 2012 speech she delivered at the Republican National Convention in which she embodied the diversification that the GOP pledged to represent. In another memorable speech, in 2018, she responded to Donald Trump’s unsolicited critique of her unsuccessful bid for reelection.
Mia Love’s use and rejection of identity politics
Mia Love represented the deep contradictions in the Republican Party. The daughter of immigrant Haitian parents, she saw her identity as a symbol of the diversity that the GOP should embrace. Indeed, many heralded her initial electoral victory as “solid gold” for a party that sought to make inroads with communities of color and women when Barack Obama was in the White House
In Congress, Love did not shy away from discussing how her identity aided her in advancing traditional Republican values. Yet, she unequivocally denounced political parties that played to race and gender in ways she viewed as divisive politics. Rather, Love’s identity as a first-generation American is what tied her to her conservative values. She once noted:
My parents immigrated to this country with ten dollars in their pockets, and a hope that the America they heard about really did exist. When tough times came, they didn’t look to Washington, they looked within.
Indeed, Love routinely invoked her parents’ immigration story and how it influenced her patriotism, love of freedom, and the role that the U.S. government should play in American lives. Republican politicians of color from immigrant backgrounds typically lean into this identity as a way of demonstrating their commitment to American values while also denying race-based discrimination as having an outsized role in prohibiting minoritized communities from achieving the American dream. Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, and Tulsi Gabbard all walk a similar tightrope of explaining their political identity and partisanship to Americans who often rely on race, religion, and/or gender as a political heuristic that is more closely aligned with the Democratic Party.
The unique challenges Black Republican women face
The U.S. public tends to default to race/gender as a shortcut to their perceptions of politics. Black women make up a small percentage within the GOP, and the majority of political science scholarship on Black women political elites and what voters think of them is overwhelmingly about those in the Democratic party. Yet, the increased viability of Black Republicans – and notably, Black women – merely reflect the continual presence of Black conservatism as a political ideology in America. This does not mean, however, that Black Americans with conservative beliefs identify as Republicans. In fact, out of all Black people who identify with a political party, less than 10% identify as a Republican.
Republican women, including Love, often employ “partisan woman-invoked rhetoric.” In simpler terms, this means that they reject racial identity politics, they purport to represent women, and they utilize a gender identity. This rhetorical strategy allowed Love to tap into conservative values by tapping into essentialist claims about womanhood – specifically, motherhood – and her family’s immigrant story. In this way, she distanced herself from the Democratic Party’s construction of race and gender. Instead, she leaned into a narrative that stressed endless opportunities for all Americans if they were willing to work for it. To make these claims, Mia Love stressed identity traits and characteristics that emphasized her Black womanhood in a way that adhered to conservative cultural norms.
Was Love the prototypical Black woman Republican?
Political scientist Cathy Wineinger demonstrates how Mia Love was able to leverage her identity to her advantage to secure votes in a conservative, majority White, and heavily Mormon district. Wineinger argues that cultural norms, social identities on their face value, are what attracted Republican voters to Love. As a politician, Love stressed her identity as the daughter of Haitian immigrants who came to America via legal channels, as a dutiful wife and mother, and as an educated Black woman who sought academic excellence without the need for governmental assistance.
However, scholars have limited understanding of Black Republican women like Love. As political historian Leah Wright Riguer explains, “one of the reasons that we have such a limited impression of Black Republicans is that our understanding of this slice of the political sphere is dominated by the individual stories of a few notorious yet significant individuals.”
And inasmuch as we remember Mia Love as a pioneer, it is imperative to critically examine the sociopolitical contexts in which Black Republican women exist. They may be critiqued or shunned by their party as well as their raced and gendered groups at times. Love’s political life reminds us that we tend to conceptualize identity politics in a narrow way that leaves little room for Black women to fully enter the political arena as their full selves.
