GOP & Race: Don't Blame All for Sins of a Few
With all the claims of Republican and conservative racism (including on this site), this is a good time to point out that conservative racism is not overly prevalent.
With all the claims of Republican and conservative racism (including on this site), I thought I would point out a couple of things to those who claim conservative racism is overly prevalent:
1. It's the Democrats who are trying to shut down the D.C. school voucher program, a program that is helping 1,700 poor minority students in the worst district in the nation and is likely to end now that House Democrats have not included extending funding for the program in their mark-up bill. Yet, it is Republicans and Libertarians who support the program and its non-white students.
2. As the infamous Ann Coulter put it in a column last year - to paraphrase - it is Democrats who are surprised America can vote a black man into office. Republicans, who as a whole are for race-blind policies, weren't shocked at all. We were depressed that this particular black man got into office, because of his political views, but we were not surprised. Cal Thomas and other conservatives wrote columns after President Obama's nomination for the Democratic Party and his final victory praising him and America for the first black president.
3. We have a black Republican National Committee chairman. Under President George W. Bush, we have had two black secretaries of state in a row - and not out of tokenism but because one was among the most popular and admired men in the Republican party and the other was the president's closest foreign policy confidante. In general, the Bush record on diversity at least equaled that of the prior Clinton administration.
4. Fellow NewMajority Contributor Crystal Wright wrote on this site about how she and her mother "...both then reflected on how there seems to be a growing number of white people who simply loath the fact Obama is president." As a white person who DOES loath the fact that a president with President Obama's views is president, I must say she is assuming a lot. There were many black people who didn't like President Bush after all!
5. Hotair.com, a conservative site run by Michelle Malkin and other conservatives, immediately and harshly attacked the Tennessee state senator's assistant who sent out the now-famous racist e-mail about President Obama, as did many other conservatives.
This is not a defense of racist comments. However, it is a note that just because it's "accepted" to lump all conservatives under one banner doesn't mean we should.