Correspondent Writer
For the last few decades in American politics, a black Republican has been perceived as an oxymoron. Black Republicans are thought of individuals who are obviously going against their own interests and against their own people.
“We are challenged by Black Democrats,” said Jennifer Carroll, Florida’s current Republican lieutenant governor-elect, in a speech at the 2008 Black Republican Forum televised on C-SPAN. “Why are you a sell-out? Why are you an Oreo?”
Despite the fact that black Republicans are such a rare breed, there was a wave of black Republicans running for office last month. The November 2010 election victories of Congressman-elects Tim Scott of South Carolina and Allen West of Florida brought the first black Republicans into the House since J. C. Watts of Oklahoma retired seven years ago. The climate of opposition against President Obama and his administration has energized previously obscure groups such as the Tea Party and notably black Republicans.
So what do these black and African-American Republicans believe? What is driving them towards the GOP when it seems so apparent that they would not be best served? For Frances Rice, Chairman of the National Black Republican Association, it takes a walk back in history to understand.
According to Rice's speech at the Forum, the Republican Party formed in 1854 as an anti-slavery party. It was Republican presidents, senators, and leaders that amended the constitution to grant African Americans freedom, citizenship and the right to vote and pushed civil rights legislation.
The Democrats set for themselves a horrendous task of trying to keep blacks in poverty, in virtual slavery, and Republicans out of power,” said Rice at the Forum. “So they started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize Republicans, black and white.”
The Democrats repealed the new civil rights laws and created Jim Crow laws and Black Codes, which Rice said took African Americans six decades to recover from.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. Most blacks were Republicans at that time, while the Democrats were known as the white racists. Now, instead, the Republican Party has been painted as a party popular among rich, racist, old white men and the Democratic Party as compassionate towards the underprivileged. How did such a drastic switch take place?
Some anti-Republican blacks point to Republican President Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign and his ‘Southern Strategy’ in which he sought the vote of racist whites. Rice claims that Nixon actually sought the vote of “fair-minded people in the South” who no longer wanted to discriminate against blacks.
In the article “The Myth of the Racist Republicans” written by Gerard Alexander, associate professor of political science at the University of Virginia, Alexander explains that around in the ‘70s, the Democratic party became associated with "acid, amnesty, and abortion.”
“The many enthusiasms of the new Democratic Party drove away suburban middle-class voters almost everywhere in the country, not least the South,” wrote Alexander.
While Rice’s Republican loyalties seem based on history, for Princella Smith, a black Republican in her 20s and a national spokeswoman for Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions organization, being a black Republican is based on her views on the issues of today.
“It is not picking fights from the past,” said Smith at the 2008 Black Republican Forum. “It is talking about what’s currently going on today in America. So I encourage you, fight the good fight.”
Smith spoke of how the resistance from Democrats to drilling oil in America was hurting most the African-Americans who are blue collar workers and lower middle class people. During her speech, Smith said that too many people must ask themselves “Do I risk getting fired because I can’t get in to work today, or do I put food on the table for my kids.”
While some black Republicans think it is important to focus on racial issues, others to see things beyond color.
When congressman-elects Allen West and Tim Scott were invited to the Congressional Black Caucus this year which is traditionally Democratic by default, West accepted while Scott declined.
“It highlights the divisions I’ve been pushing forward to erase,” Scott told the Herald-Tribune.
"We are not monolithic,” said lieutenant governor-elect Carroll at the Black Republican Forum two years ago. “Jesse Jackson cannot speak for me nor can he always speak for you. Al Sharpton cannot speak for me nor can he always speak for you. No other ethnic group in America has that one voice that the media always goes to get an opinion about the black community.”
Carroll, Rice and other black Republicans blame the media for portraying blacks as victims and demonizing the Republican party.
“The media and the Democrats…hijacked the civil rights record of the Republican Party and took blacks down the path of socialism that has turned our cities into economic and social wastelands. Socialism does not work,” said Rice during the Forum.
"We want to heal the black community, not to keep it suppressed,” said Carroll to the audience at the Forum.
Blacks in America are diverse people. Perhaps it should not be so surprising that there are differing political view points among the black community as to how to cure the ills of Americans.
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