REPRINT: Why There Aren't More Black Republicans, 1 of 3

This blog post is reprinted from one I wrote on sodahead.com under the name CarbonMike (link to original here).

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I'm a pro-gun, pro-markets, pro-growth liberal who comes wrapped in a black skin. I also believe America is best served by having a serious and vibrant conservative movement as well as a serious and equally vibrant liberal tradition. But lately I've noticed that conservatives -- not all of them, but too many of their leading figures -- have been indulging in an awful lot of foolishness at the expense of serious, informed, rational dissent. At the same time, their political fortunes seem to be in decline (the changing demographic map is not in their favor, not to mention the disaster of the last eight years) and a question I hear often from mainstream conservative strategists is, how can we expand the party -- or more to the point, why can't we seem to?

Well, why can't they? Why aren't there more black Republicans/conservatives?

Some of my fellow African-American politics junkies probably remember the GOP's periodic "racial listening tours" (a term which is exactly two-thirds correct), an unintentionally funny exercise in which Republicans roam the highways and byways of our great nation asking why they can't seem to capture the black vote. Sometimes an obligatory black person is trotted out as if to demonstrate good faith, illustrating complete ignorance of the fact that it demonstrates just the opposite. I'm looking at you, Michael Steele.

The question itself is a testament to the almost pathological tone-deafness of many conservatives when it comes to black politics. Who would ever dare to field a candidate in Florida who was wrong on Cuba, or a candidate in New York who was wrong on Israel, or one in any Southern state who was wrong on guns? Not only would that person's defeat be a foregone conclusion, but once the electoral carnage had ceased, the operative question would be not "why did that person lose?" but "what ever made you think they could win?"

Yet the leaders and thinkers of the Republican party seem mystified that black people don't flock to the genius of its economic ideas and socially conservative ways. Why Are They Not Conservatives? Because conservatives are usually wrong on race.

Not just wrong in a speakers-making-occasional-gaffes sort of way. The GOP has gone out of its way ever since the Dixiecrat Flip to be consistently, aggressively wrong on race, every chance it gets. Its leaders can't seem to help themselves: Trent Lott and his CCC/Southern Partisan affiliation, not to mention his rhetorical appreciation of Strom Thurmond's brilliant segregationist ideas. Ronald Reagan slyly referring to "states' rights" in Mississippi. Lee Atwater's racially infused campaign propaganda (talk about victimology!) George Bush Jr. going out of his way to speak at segregationist Bob Jones university (which, by the way, was granted tax-exempt status by the Reagan administration). The countless Republican politicians and lesser operatives who feel compelled to make racial slurs about President Obama and his family.

Wrong, as well, in a hypocritical and cynical way. Conservatives -- and even many liberals -- take great pains to brand public figures of color who speak intemperately on the subject of race as being beyond the frontiers of civilized debate. Yet you can easily name any number of white conservatives who have made ethnically insulting, racially inflammatory, or downright racist statements -- loudly and in public -- and have not only avoided censure, but have continued to be accepted in mainstream political discourse. To my white brothers reading this: please don't pretend not to know what I'm talking about. I personally (along with most black people I know) have no special use for Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, but if neither one of those names can be mentioned without the accompanying phrase "racial demagogue" then someone needs to explain why Pat Buchanan is a talking-head show regular and Rush Limbaugh seems to have veto power over any public statement made by any Republican anywhere.

The irony here is that many black voters don't have any illusion that the Democratic party somehow automatically has their best interests at heart. Talk to young black urban professionals in my demographic -- who vote overwhelmingly Democratic -- and you'll have no problem getting them to admit that certain major elements of liberal social policy over the last few decades have failed, and failed badly. Those of use who love urban life and traditions understand, for example, that Jane Jacobs' The Death And Life of Great American Cities was -- intentionally or otherwise -- as much an indictment of liberal/Democratic public housing policies as it was a broadside against Robert Moses.

Conservatives really don't understand this, or at least behave as if they don't. You go talk to working-class black people of my parents' generation about, say, Clinton's welfare reform policies and most of them will say they didn't go far enough. Talk to black people who live in high-crime neighborhoods and you'll find that they're absolutely livid about crime -- on criminal justice issues, many of them are slightly to the right of Genghis Khan. Yet you can't get either group to touch the Republican party with a ten-foot pole.

Shouldn't conservatives be interested in attracting more of what seems to be a natural constituency for them? Sure they should be. Maybe they are. But the electoral numbers say that that's not enough. Black voters often resent being taken for granted by Democrats, but we prefer it to being treated with outright contempt by Republicans.