Jubbergun wrote:
While Mr. Steele has been...less than impressive during his tenure as the RNC Chairman (the word "amateurish" and phrase "out of his depth" spring to mind), saying he is a 'token' is still wrong, on many levels. He was probably the most prominent member of the party to toss his hat in the ring for the job. If I remember correctly, despite being a bumbling doofus with a foot perpetually in his yapper, he out-maneuvered what opposition he had for the post. Again, this whole "token" thing is beat to death, and what people are really saying is that republicans only allow/endorse blacks in their party as some sort of window dressing, and that no "real" black people would ever be republicans.
I'm not implying black people can't be Republicans (or implying anything), I'm stating overtly that the Republicans voted in an RNC head that is grossly incompetent because of the optics of him being black. And as for being "prominent", he is the former lieutenant governor and failed Senate candidate from Maryland. Maybe that's the most prominent person they could find, but if so that would just speak to his competition and not to his own prominence.
But as for the thought that "black people can't be Republicans", that's a little deceptive. Black people CAN be conservatives, but that isn't same thing as saying they are likely to be Republicans. The party cemented it's reputation for a generation as the party of the Southern Strategy that opposed the Civil Rights Act and racial integration in the '50s and '60s. It's not surprising that a party who took it as their creed that black people should be second class citizens does not have a lot of black support. There's a reason the Dixiecrats left the Democratic party after they passed the Civil Rights Act, and there's a reason they all ended up as newly converted Republicans.
You should be equally unsurprised if any party that rants against Hispanics and Muslims will lose at least a generation of support from those groups as well.
None of this is a values statement about conservative people, or even people who happen to be Republicans. It's just historical fact.

Akina: bitch I will stab you in the face