No Love for Black Conservatives

As of this writing, Michael Steele, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, has today been elected the first black Republican National Committee Chairman. Already, the mainstream media and liberal politicians are putting out hit pieces on him, and are suggesting that the Republican Party is “pandering” to the “African-American” community (whatever that means, as I consider myself an American who just happens to be black, though I’m more German/Irish than African). It is odd that I don’t recall the same folks saying that Obama’s candidacy was pandering to African Americans. And I further recall that there was elation over the progress that blacks have made when Obama won the Democratic nomination. But now there is none of the same over an exceptionally talented and clearly qualified black man who won the RNC Chair? Oh, I get it. He’s not a liberal so he doesn’t count, and neither does any other black conservative such as myself. I guess we haven’t “come far enough” for them.

Just a couple of weeks ago, civil rights leader Dr. Benjamin Hooks was interviewed on Dan Rather’s weekly show, Dan Rather Reports. When asked about Obama and potential Supreme Court appointments, Hooks said that we need a black man on the Supreme Court who would speak for black people. Dan Rather reminded Hooks that Clarence Thomas was a black Supreme Court Justice, but Hooks’ riposte was that Thomas didn’t count because he was a conservative. Hmmm… even black civil rights leaders don’t approve of black conservatives. Of course, Dan Rather did not challenge Hooks any further, but the obvious question is what would a Supreme Court Justice do that would specifically speak for black Americans without speaking for all Americans? To my knowledge blacks have achieved full civil rights at the level of the highest court in the land, so there is nothing I can think of, given my limited knowledge, that blacks as a group are lacking which wouldn’t apply to every other American. So I must be missing something.

What I don’t think many of us understand is that there are many forms of slavery or servitude other than the traditional plantation view to which we have become accustomed. There is also ideological slavery, whereby as a people we line ourselves up en masse behind one political party that is not necessarily in our best interests. It can certainly be argued that Obama garnered 95% of the black vote nationally due to its historical nature, but overall the country voted for Obama 56% to 44% for McCain. There is huge statistical significance in the disparity of this vote. The black vote was not even close to national statistics, so ostensibly the landslide vote in the black community was race-based, party-based, or some combination of the two (and potentially others not considered here). As an undergraduate mathematics major, I am struck that this combination of factors was able to produce a 39% point swing, and I don’t believe it bodes well for blacks. If race was the larger factor, then we pulled the lever for Obama with little faith that our country would vote for a black man and found out afterwards that it would. If party was the larger factor, then we have arguably, in effect, become slaves to the Democratic Party.

The lack of faith in our electorate is certainly a forgivable and understandable reason for the black statistical vote, but it potentially indicates that while we expect colorblindness from others, we were not ready to deliver the same as a group by simply voting for who we thought was the best candidate. In the latter case of us voting for the Democratic Party as a whole, I believe the issue is that blacks are rallying around a party that is often in conflict with our traditional values brought about by a deep Christian faith that has sustained us as a people over the past four hundred years. What we don’t understand is that we’re buying into a philosophy of progressive liberalism, which is about more and bigger government that saps our progress as a people by offering us (and everyone else) dependence on government instead of self-reliance and a level playing field. This is a party that is largely for abortion with no restrictions, even to the point of death for a baby that has the audacity of hope to survive a late term abortion. This is a party that does not uphold the sanctity of traditional marriage, but encourages other arrangements as equivalent. This is a party that does not believe in protecting our borders, which hurts our national security and allows undocumented workers to siphon public services from low wage blacks. What’s worse, this party demonizes blacks that don’t fall into line (such as the aforementioned Michael Steele). If that isn’t slavery, I don’t know what is.

How soon we have forgotten the Republican Party, whose principles of limited government, freedom, liberty, and self-reliance for all brought us out of the previous slavery we knew all too well, only to have to have us fall into another type of our own free will within a generation.
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