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Some prominent black conservatives don’t seem to have gotten the message...yet.
Just as Obama has touched black Democratic voters, he has engendered conflicting emotions among black Republicans. They revel over the possibility of a black president but wrestle with the thought that the Illinois senator doesn’t sit beside them ideologically.
“Among black conservatives,” [Armstrong] Williams said, “they tell me privately, it would be very hard to vote against him in November.”
One of the central conceits of black conservatism I’ve seen - both in its appeal and its acceptance - is the idea that black Americans simply need to get over the race thing (notice how this keeps coming back up?), and that the real path forward is through the “nonracial” (predominantly white) acceptance of supply side gospel and social conservative principle. The reason that so many in the black community view black conservatives with suspicion is this idea that one sells their birthright, their blackness, for a bowl of tax cuts and anti-gay initiatives. For the vast majority of us, the black American experience is an undeniable and irrefutable part of who we are, not something that’s an either/or competitor with Social Security privatization.
Of course, there’s the flip side:
John McWhorter, a self-described political moderate who is a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and a New York Sun columnist, said Obama’s Democratic Party victory “proves that while there still is some racism in the United States, there is not enough to matter in any serious manner. This is a watershed moment.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the November 9th, 2008 talking point - Obama’s victory will show us that the final nail has been laid in the coffin of racism forever, because, for some reason, all black people are Barack Obama.
There is a consistent misuse of the colorblind theory of racial reconciliation - and evidence that total colorblindness in society is far more dangerous than multiculturalism to racial reconciliation and harmony. The reasoning behind it is pretty simple: if you believe that society’s ultimate aim is the complete denial, rather than acceptance, of our differences, then the very fact that we’re different becomes an affront to societal harmony.
I’m sure there will be conservatives who attack the black conservatives in this article as weak or in thrall to the “race baiters”, who apparently pepper the national lake of race like beafro’ed Babe Winkelmans. But they’re black people in a party whose entire ideological base is formed around a particular manifestation of the white experience in America. If there’s anyone who can’t forget that our differences are a critical part of who we are and how we think, it’s them.
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Jesse Taylor on 11:08 AM •
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John McWhorter… for some reason, all black people are Barack Obama.
Wow, another day, another linguist I studied back in college!
Anyhoo, just for a little background detail—McWhorter is to racial issues as someone like Katie Roiphe is to women’s issues. Having grown up very upper middle class, he can afford to ignore any aspect of racial politics where class and race intersect. Yes, it’s true, if you’re the black kid from a wealthy family who grew up in a white neighborhood and went to all the best schools, grew up to have a high profile white-collar career, and have spent your entire life in an academic setting where people tend to at least give lip service to liberal ideals, racism (on a personal or experiential level) is largely over for you and can be easily solved by throwing a few politically moderate black politicians into the mix.
There are still black Republicans?
The only Black Republicans are a handful of elected officials and pundits who went conservative in order to fill the “color” quota on the rightwing gabfests.
It just occured to me that despite all the yammering by Republicans about how they are from the “real America”, the Democratic Party is far more representative of a cross section of America by the lone fat its not 95% white like the Republican Party is.
Can you imagine all the yapping by Sean Hannity if there was a party that was 95% black? We’d hear all about the Real Racists (tm) then.
I *want* there to be a conservative party for black people. Or at least a non-racist Republican party.
It’s a major part of what acceptance in this country would be like.
What I really want to know, which strategists, DC insider, campaign strategists or pundit class who keep pulling race card as electorate strategy.
Some of what we see during campaign is definitely “strategy” not just momentary slip up. It consists of talking points over time to frame narrative appealing to ugly side of race conception.
Who keeps playing with fire?
... there has to me a systematic tool for everybody to catch the big people who keep making this strategy. That’s I want to know. Drag them out and burn them in public square. I’ll bring firewood.
There are still black Republicans?
From what I’ve seen, they tend to be Christian fundamentalists who figure joining with other fundamentalists is the best way to get their agenda implemented.
Thanks for describing as succiently as anyone I’ve ever read why “colorblindness” misses the point.
I actually know a fair number of Black Conservatives/Republicans because of my (continued - long story...) association with the fundamentalist church I was raised in.
At one level I know exactly why they are Black Republicans. They are very religious, and very personally conservative. 50-years ago, their party affiliation would be expected, not unusual. (Most of the ones I know are 50+ year of age, some of them in their 90’s)
They are people who didn’t leave the Party but the Party quite literally left them.
I don’t think they yet fully appreciate that their Republican Party is gone and will never come back. They are sort of adrift, with a set of political beliefs that aren’t really represented by any single party any more...especially not the current Republican Party…
Amanda:
Thanks for describing as succiently as anyone I’ve ever read why “colorblindness” misses the point.
I second this.
The silliness of total colorblindness is also exactly why one of Stephen Colbert’s most consistently funny bits of shtick is his “I don’t see color” thing.
Well those extra six votes can only help!
I thought racism had been over forever the first time there was a black CEO, or maybe the first time there was a black head coach, or maybe the first time a black family moved into some suburb without getting crosses burned on their lawn.
that silly racism, doesn’t it know it’s over?
For there to be a black conservative party, blacks need to have something worth conserving. Wealth, power, privilege...something like that.
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John McWhorter… for some reason, all black people are Barack Obama.
Wow, another day, another linguist I studied back in college!
Anyhoo, just for a little background detail—McWhorter is to racial issues as someone like Katie Roiphe is to women’s issues. Having grown up very upper middle class, he can afford to ignore any aspect of racial politics where class and race intersect. Yes, it’s true, if you’re the black kid from a wealthy family who grew up in a white neighborhood and went to all the best schools, grew up to have a high profile white-collar career, and have spent your entire life in an academic setting where people tend to at least give lip service to liberal ideals, racism (on a personal or experiential level) is largely over for you and can be easily solved by throwing a few politically moderate black politicians into the mix.