Steele says GOP is anti-nonwhite
From an interview with Michael Steele, the first black chairman of the Republican National Committee:
Q: Why do you think so few nonwhite Americans support the Republican Party right now?
A: ‘Cause we have offered them nothing! And the impression we’ve created is that we don’t give a damn about them or we just outright don’t like them. And that’s not a healthy thing for a political party. I think the way we’ve talked about immigration, the way we’ve talked about some of the issues that are important to African-Americans, like affirmative action… I mean, you know, having an absolute holier-than-thou attitude about something that’s important to a particular community doesn’t engender confidence in your leadership by that community—or consideration of you for office or other things—because you’ve already given off the vibe that you don’t care. What I’m trying to do now is to say we do give a damn.
This is one of the most contemptible, not to mention false and mindless, statements I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t ask for a cheaper set of cheap shots against the GOP, even from the liberal media or the Democrats or a bunch of academic leftists. This, sadly, is what happens when you put blacks in charge, even “conservative” blacks. With almost no exceptions, their black part takes over. Look at how upstanding “non-racial” blacks such as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, after being raised to the highest levels of society, became black racialists over time.
Before the election, I expressed the hope that Obama and his crew would behave in such a race-conscious, anti-white manner that it would bring about an awakening to racial reality among conservative whites. Maybe I was putting my hopes in the wrong party. Maybe it’s the chairman of the Republican National Committee who is going to do that.
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Terry Morris writes:
“And the impression we’ve created is that we don’t give a damn about them or we just outright don’t like them.”
It’s the Non-Nonwhite Theory of Nonwhite Anti-Republicanism.
I.e., it’s all conservatism’s fault that nonwhites despise the Republican party. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that their worldview (as a group) is incompatible with Republicanism. Of course their worldview is compatible with Republicanism. All we have to do to show it is to show them that we care about them by moving away from Republican principles.
What kills me about people like Steele is that in spite of all the evidence to the contrary (which is overwhelming), they think the Republican party can draw minorities and immigrants to itself and away from the Democrats. The only way this can ever happen is if and when the two parties abandon their current principles and adopt those of the other.
Republicans like Steele do not seem to be capable of grasping the simple concept that what they’re doing in reality by abandoning conservative principles is alienating their base, which results in a net loss to the Republicans, never a net gain.
Besides, why would Republicans ever believe they can out-liberal the Democrats?
Charles T. writes:
In other words, the GOP must offer non-whites something that is over and above what the GOP platform already calls for. This essentially creates a mini-Democratic party within the GOP.
Mark Jaws writes:
Steele’s comments are not even worthy of a response. But either the GOP rids itself of such fifth columnist black racialists, or it will go the way of the Whigs and implode. I favor the latter course. In simple terms, conservative whites need a party that will address their issues, not a lite version of the minority-mongering Democrats.
Sage McLaughlin writes:
Two things about this latest outrage from Steele, who also has an abortion misstep hounding him as we speak (has there been a more obvious and catastrophic failure as RNC chairman in our lifetimes?):
1) His comments reveal nothing about blacks in particular. Steele’s black racialism is the normal, default, healthy concern for one’s own that people of all races feel. His being put into a position of power over the Republican Party cannot change this fact. It is whites’ self-imposed anti-racialism that is so unnatural and out of proportion. It requires a tremendous level of conscious effort to strip away a person’s sense of ethnic loyalty and belonging. Whites in the West today are relentlessly bombarded with the message that their blood is a stain, that their past is illegitimate, and that any power or success they enjoy has come at the expense of those more worthy than themselves. Blacks—not so much. [LA replies: I don’t agree that Steele is expressing normal or proper racialism. He is telling vicious and absurd lies about the GOP. So his racialism is of the immoral kind.]
2) Given that the racial consciousness expressed unapologetically by non-whites is in fact normal, and given the existing dynamic of inter- and intra-racial politics in America, one should expect any black person who is elevated by the Republican establishment to turn on it at the earliest possible opportunity. The fear of being castigated as a turncoat runs very, very deep in the American black psyche. The more favor and authority granted by the GOP to a man like Steele, the more he risks being completely alienated from the tribe. Thus rather than gratitude and fellow-feeling, men like Colin Powell experience a bubbling cauldron of insecurity and resentment. No one should ever expect any differently, and the GOP is fatally stupid for not seeing this. (Just as they were stupid for not seeing that a “rightist” party headed by a liberal dimwit President and an openly homosexual chairman would drag the party leftward and destroy it.) [LA replies: Agreed. The dynamics Sage describes are virtually irresistible. Only the rarest type of individual would be able to resist them. And you can’t choose people for leading positions based on the assumption that they are the rarest kind of individual. Thomas Sowell is, almost literally, one out of 35 million.]
LA writes:
Steele must go. If the Republicans leave him in office after this outrageous attack on the party he leads, they are deserving of nothing but contempt.
What have Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. said about it?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 12, 2009 02:16 AM | Send