Time for Steele to Drop the Stereotypes
Michael Steele has discovered a new tool for recruiting more blacks to the Republican Party: chicken and potato salad. Seriously! When I initially heard about Steele’s remarks, I laughed in disbelief and told the person explaining it to me: “No, way." Well... then I watched the clip on YouTube.
A Hoosier Access reporter asked the RNC Chairman the following question at the Young Republicans convention in Indianapolis in July:
"I wanted to ask you regarding your inclusion of diverse populations in the Republican party. What is your plan moving forward?"
Steele responds: "My plan is to say y’all come. Cause a lot of you are already here."
Unidentified person shouts: "I’ll bring the collard greens."
Steele adds: "There you go. I got the fried chicken and the potato salad."
I’m surprised someone didn’t say they’d bring the watermelons. The assumption in this food banter is all black people are the same, they love to sop up collard greens, fried chicken and potato salad. What’s ironic is moments after making these comments, Steele says the Republican party “welcomes and embraces” people of different backgrounds. Not with comments like that you won’t.
In fact, the person who told me about the remarks is a young, white Republican who found the comments “off-putting” at best. She went on to explain that she thinks it demonstrates Steele’s struggle with being a black Republican while at the same time acting as the voice of a party most uncomfortable with discussing issues of race and diversity. If Steele, as the first black chairman of the RNC can’t be effective in recruiting more black voters, then who can?
Numerous opportunities have arisen over the summer for Steele to recast the GOP as a more tolerant, dare I suggest, compassionate party of diversity. But he has remained strangely silent this summer on such topics as the racist comments uttered by various GOP folks and most recently the Gates arrest.
Steele’s remarks and the outcome of the Young Republicans Convention, where racist Audra Shay was elected its new chairman, doesn’t bode well for the GOP’s future. Someone commented to me that sadly the state of the Young Republicans is just a mirror image of what’s going on in the Grand Old Party. This person even said recently, while attending an event at the Heritage Foundation with a woman in her fifties, that the woman glanced around the room, shaking her head and remarked, “I guess we’re just going to have to wait until all these old people die off for the party to change.”
The party’s outward image doesn’t look like the welcome mat for diversity. Just for kicks I visited the Young Republican National Federation website. Its leadership is almost exclusively white and its promotional video “This is my party” is pure vanilla, no chocolate or strawberry in sight.
The GOP needs to move into the MODERN world: stop viewing ethnic groups through stereotypes, tune into what’s really important to voters and identify issues where the GOP shares common ground with groups. Leave the finger licking good comments to Colonel Sanders and get the PARTY started, y’all hear?