The Left's Patronization of Black Conservatives

For years, the left has peddled the narrative that the Republican Party exists to serve the interests of old, rich, white, straight, cisgender Christian men while the “diverse” Democratic Party represents the interests of the working class, in addition to marginalized and oppressed groups.  Needless to say, anyone who challenges this agenda poses an enormous threat to the Democrats.

 

The left has found a formidable foe in Candace Owens, also known as Red Pill Black, a popular You Tube personality who works as Director of Urban Engagement for Turning Point USA.    While speaking at UCLA last week, Owens criticized African-Americans who fall into the victim mentality, suggesting that they should not use the legacy of slavery as an excuse to remain “government-dependent.”  Those hating on Owens after she made those statements included Tom Arnold, Shaun King, and Perez Hilton.  Owens has found an unlikely defender in rapper Kanye West, who justifiably angered many conservatives when he suggested that Former President George W. Bush did not care about black people during a benefit concert held to raise money for Hurricane Katrina relief.  More than a decade later, he angered many liberals by daring to meet with President Trump during the transition period.   

 

When West tweeted out “I like the way Candace Owens thinks,” the liberal mob went into an uproar.  It certainly did not help his standing with the “in crowd” when he tweeted out videos featuring Dilbert creator Scott Adams, an outspoken supporter of President Trump.  After seeing all of the hate from the “tolerant” left, West tweeted out “We have freedom of speech but not freedom of thought.”  Perhaps none of Kanye’s comments triggered the left more than his declaration that he loved President Trump.  He continued to double down, referring to the President as “his brother” and going out in public wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.  Kanye’s support of President Trump has led many Hollywood elites to stop following him on Twitter.  

 

During a segment on “The Ingraham Angle” related to Owens earlier this week, Democrat Michael Starr Hopkins told Kevin Jackson, a black conservative, that “black people are being used by Donald Trump, people like you are being used.”

 

Earlier in the segment, Hopkins accused Republicans of intellectual dishonesty for their sudden embrace of Kanye despite the fact that they had condemned him following his comments about former President Bush.  Wait, I thought liberals liked it when people “evolved.”  They don’t share the same enthusiasm when people become more conservative over time; actually a more common phenomenon in American politics.   It’s worth pointing out that many Hollywood conservatives, such as Jon Voight, did not start out that way.  For many years, President Trump described himself as a “very pro-choice” Democrat. President Reagan spent much of his life as a Democrat, which many argue led to his first wife Jane Wyman, a registered Republican, asking for a divorce.  Even as the Republican Governor of California and a rising star in the conservative movement, Reagan signed into law one of the most liberal abortion laws in the pre-Roe v. Wade era.  Reagan later became an indispensible ally of the pro-life movement; as President of the United States, he wrote a book titled Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation.      

 

Owens hardly finds herself the first black conservative targeted by the liberal mob.  In 1991, Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice in United States History, decided to retire.  In what would become the crown jewel of his four-year tenure as America’s Chief Executive, President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, an African-American conservative who had previously served as the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to replace Marshall.  Thomas’s nomination came just four years after Democrats blocked the nomination of Conservative Robert Bork to the Supreme Court by engaging in character assassination.  After Thomas’s confirmation hearings concluded, the public became aware that one of his colleagues at the EEOC, Anita Hill, accused Thomas of sexual harassment.  Thomas vehemently denied Hill’s accusations, describing his treatment during the Confirmation hearings as a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”  The left’s attempts to smear Thomas did not work but their failure to derail Thomas’s nomination did not stop them from using similar tactics against black conservatives in the future.  To this day, many on the left still refer to Justice Thomas as an “Uncle Tom.”

 

A decade after Thomas’s contentious nomination to the Supreme Court, Maryland’s Republican Gubernatorial Nominee Bob Ehrlich selected Michael Steele as his running mate.  The Ehrlich-Steele ticket went on to win the 2002 gubernatorial election.  In 2006, Lt. Gov. Steele ran for an open Senate seat in Maryland.  Liberal blogger Steve Gilliard featured a doctored photo of Steele on his website, portraying him as a black-faced minstrel.  Anyone who dared to draw such a cartoon depicting a black liberal would surely face accusations of racism.  Salima Siler Marriott, a Democrat who served in the Maryland House of Delegates at the time, compared Steele to an Oreo cookie because of his “anti-black” political philosophy.  After losing the Senate election in an overwhelmingly Democratic year, Steele briefly served as the Chairman of the Republican National Committee during President Obama’s first two years in office, spearheading a “Fire Pelosi” bus tour.   Steele, now an MSNBC Contributor, has found himself in the left’s good graces as he has developed a reputation as an outspoken Trump critic.    

 

In 2014, “comedian” Russell Brand went after Jason Riley, a writer for The Wall Street Journal, calling him “freakish” and a “betrayer” of his race for not subscribing to liberal orthodoxy.  He also made sure to mock his “white” sounding voice.  So much for “tolerance.” 

 

Following the signature of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in the final days of 2017, the left accused Republicans of using South Carolina Senator Tim Scott as a “prop” during a signing ceremony on the South Lawn.  Political blogger Andy Ostroy remarked that “there’s ONE black person there and they have him standing right next to the mic like a manipulated prop.” Scott fired back at Ostroy, “Uh probably because I helped write the bill for the past year, have multiple provisions included, got multiple Senators on board over the last week and have worked on tax reform my entire time in Congress. But if you’d rather just see my skin color, pls feel free.”  

 

It should hardly come as a surprise that Hispanic and female conservatives don’t fare much better with the thought police.  According to liberal logic, the only issue that matters to Hispanic Americans is amnesty and the only issue that women care about is birth control.  Using this train of thought, these groups should obviously support the Democrats, who offer both on a silver platter. Liberals fail to realize that many Hispanics oppose illegal immigration, especially because many of them went through many inconveniences to come to America legally.  During a recent appearance on CNN’s “New Day,” liberal Michael Eric Dyson told Former Trump Campaign Adviser Steve Cortes that “your being a brown person cannot exempt you from the horrible inside acknowledgement that there’s something going on here that you can’t justify a white supremacist’s logic. You can be a white supremacist in brown skin.”  

 

The left’s attacks against conservative women reached a fever pitch in 2016, when Hillary Clinton served as the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” suggesting that women who did not support Hillary (either in the primary or general election) were traitors to their gender. As she continues to go on her excuse tour, Hillary suggested that she lost married women because many of them felt pressured to vote for her opponent because of their husbands.  One woman who definitely does not fall into that category is Mary Matalin, as her husband James Carville served as one of Bill Clinton’s attack dogs, coining the phrase “bimbo eruptions” to describe the women who came forward with sexual misconduct allegations against then-candidate Bill Clinton.  Carville definitely would not have put any pressure on Matalin, a Republican, to vote for President Trump.  Carville and Matalin first met in 1992, when Matalin worked on President George H.W. Bush’s re-election campaign.  Such a marriage seems damn near impossible in today’s much more polarized political climate.  For the record, Matalin did not even vote for President Trump, but the fact that she did not vote for Hillary either still makes her a foe of the feminist movement.

 

The left resents African-Americans who don’t fall for their many scare tactics.  In 1998, the Democrats ran an ad in Missouri saying “When you don’t vote, you let another church explode.  When you don’t vote, you allow another cross to burn.”  While campaigning for President Obama’s re-election in 2012, Vice President Joe Biden told a mostly black audience that GOP Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney wanted to “unchain Wall Street,” adding “they’re gonna put y’all back in chains.”

 

If nothing else, the “bromance” between Kanye West and President Trump illustrates the contempt the left has for diversity of opinions.  As practitioners of identity politics, the left expects everyone who belongs to a certain “group” to think a certain way.  The left brands anyone who doesn’t with a scarlet letter “T,” for traitor.