A black bourgeoisie perspective on U.S. politics
Steele answering questions directly and honestly? He must be getting ready to resign… From the Chicago Sun-Times:
Why should an African-American vote Republican?
“You really don’t have a reason to, to be honest — we haven’t done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True,” Republican National Chairman Michael Steele told 200 DePaul University students Tuesday night.
[…]
Steele seemed to hold the diverse student audience’s attention most when he talked about his own experience suffering racial discrimination — in his first law firm interview for example — and when he confessed his party’s failure to reach out to African-Americans:
“We have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans,” Steele said. “This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don’t walk away from parties, Their parties walk away from them.
“For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, ‘Bubba’ went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.”
See, Steele is not a dummy. All of this is historically accurate, in fact. I got no beef on that front. But to keep a job in the GOP — well, it apparently requires checking your good sense and your compassion at the door. Here’s hoping we see more of this Steele with a spine rather than the typical soft-minded reactionary Party of No talking points he’s usually spewing…
Cheryl Contee aka "Jill Tubman", Baratunde Thurston aka "Jack Turner", rikyrah, Leutisha Stills aka "The Christian Progressive Liberal", B-Serious, Casey Gane-McCalla, Jonathan Pitts-Wiley aka "Marcus Toussaint," Fredric Mitchell
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