Rhode Island state senator Tiara Mack sparked a buzz on the internet after asking for votes after twerking upside down in a bikini on a beach.
“Vote Senator Mack,” Mack said after shaking her butt in the short clip posted to TikTok on Monday.
Mack, a Democrat representing District 6 in Rhode Island, received praise from her supporters while her critics lashed out on social media and on conservative networks such as Fox News.
Rhode Island State Senator Tiara Mack (D) made this video encouraging people to vote for her. She also sponsored a bill for teaching kids “queer inclusive, pleasure-based sex ed” pic.twitter.com/835n4jS8LS
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 5, 2022
Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson bashed the senator while playing her clip on his show.
“You have to wonder why it’s left to this show of all places to announce the rising star, the next rising star in the Democratic Party,” Carlson said in a clip posted to Twitter. “You ever had those moments where you see something and you’re like ‘Oh, that’s the future, that’s what it looks like.’ We saw Tiara Mack, head in the sand, twerking, and we thought, man, that’s the Democratic Party in 2020.”
Why are Democrats holding back the very talented Tiara Mack? pic.twitter.com/kNbFVdSVME
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) July 6, 2022
Mack posted a series of tweets to respond to her critics.
“Can the media cover any policy wins had by the youngest Black state senator in Rhode Island?” she wrote on Twitter. “As a Black, queer woman you all should know the answer. It’s no. Let’s them carry on their narrative. Me? I’m going to be joyful, free, and unbothered.”
As a Black, queer woman you all should know the answer. It’s no. Let’s them carry on their narrative. Me? I’m going to be joyful, free, and unbothered.
— Tiara Mack (@MackDistrict6) July 5, 2022
can the media also cover the 10+ bills I sponsored that the @RISenate never scheduled for a hearing?
— Tiara Mack (@MackDistrict6) July 5, 2022
Mack continued to clap back when she posted another clip on TikTok.
“Am I surprised that the internet is more ready to talk about me twerking upside down on America’s birthday yesterday than they are ready to talk about any of the policy wins I have this year, or any of the other accomplishments that I’ve had outside of the Senate chamber, inside of the Senate chamber?” she said in the video posted to TikTok. “I’m not surprised that they would rather talk about me shaking my ass. The consistency and the dedication in which the media decides to target Black queer women, myself, in ways that are unproductive to the narrative … it’s lazy, it’s tacky and, quite frankly, I’m over it.”
@mackdistrict6
According to NBC News, Mack made history in 2020, becoming the first openly LGBTQ+ Black person elected to the Rhode Island state Senate.
“I’m going to be unapologetically Black, I’m going to be unapologetically queer, and I’m going to be unapologetically young, and I’m going to push back against the system that tells us we don’t deserve justice now,” the senator told NBC News at the time.
The 28-year-old, who graduated from Brown University in 2016, previously served as the Youth Organizing Specialist at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, the New York Daily News reports.
Mack also sponsored legislation to amend the state’s sex-education law and require schools to implement courses that include discussions of gender and sexual orientation, The Providence Journal reports.
As a gay woman who grew up in the conservative Christian South, spending parts of her childhood in Georgia and South Carolina, Mack said “there was no conversation about what it meant to be gay.”
“Sex education is about learning about gender and gender roles, about what it’s like to grow up in a single-parent family. It’s about all the things I wish I had gotten. It’s about knowing I wasn’t alone,” Mack told The Providence Journal.
