Monday, November 17, 2008
Michael Steele and so-called racial harmony
Society piece by
Ari Kaufman
In the aftermath of the Bush years and John McCain’s defeat, Republicans and conservatives are undoubtedly depressed and seeking new leadership. Names like Gingrich, Thompson, Romney and even Jindal and Cantor are being tossed around. But one man who seems to meet with acceptance from nearly all right-leaning folks is former Maryland Lieutenant Governor and current chair of the Republican Political Action Committee, GOPAC, Michael Steele.
While Steele is revered by conservatives for his maturity and humility, as a minority, much like Sarah Palin, he is mocked and reviled by liberals for simply being a Republican. And even despite our incoming president praising the Republican Party for their role in freeing the slaves nearly a century and a half ago, Democrats remain perplexed as to how so-called “minorities” could be members of President Lincoln’s party.
No doubt there is a great deal of excitement these days about “healing racial wounds” with the election of our first black president. But many, such as myself, do not believe these “wounds” will be cleansed until blacks like the aforementioned Steele, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Shelby Steele, Condi Rice, Lynn Swann, former GOPAC chair J.C. Watts and many others, can speak freely in public about the party that they, along with hundreds of millions of other Americans, (including a startling majority of the most important blacks in history) support.
Steele’s rise to his present status is remarkable. The man who won a scholarship to Johns Hopkins, persevered after nearly dropping out, then spent three years in the seminary preparing for priesthood, prior to attending law school and becoming a politician, is Barack Obama’s “American Dream” personified. That the media and millions of Americans ignore his story simply due to his party affiliation, robs us all of imperative knowledge and, dare I say, “hope.”
But what else is new?
The resumes of Dr. Thomas Sowell , who though very much anti-intellectual, graduated from Harvard pre civil rights era, or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas , speak for themselves; yet few Americans know the former, and too many condemn the latter. Why should these two men, or anyone, have to follow a group think mentality and support a certain agenda, in order to be admired by elite scholars? In his own bizarre way, even a partisan hack like the New York Times’ Frank Rich seems to agree. As a former teacher in urban Los Angeles, I surely believe inner city kids in Steele’s hometown of Baltimore—a city with a murder rate equal to Baghdad – could stand to learn about his improbable rise to success, while still respecting the accomplishments of their current black mayor.
And as many conservatives feel their their party and country have been betrayed over race recently by Colin Powell and perhaps Rice and Watts, Steele stood firmly with party and country. He was on Fox News panels numerous times in the closing days prior to the election defending McCain, bluntly saying he wanted a president who’d “cut taxes and kill terrorists.” Simple, direct and yet accurate.
One week after the election, Dennis Prager’s weekly column noted that, “The Obama victory poses a serious challenge to liberalism and to the doctrine of black victimhood.”
Though Prager says this as a white man, this is the exact same rationale as Larry Elder’s “victicrat” terminology. For his honesty, Elder, a black man, has conveniently been deemed an “Uncle Tom” more often in the past decade than Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton decry society as “racist.”
Prager continued on this topic:
“If fewer and fewer blacks perceive white Americans as racist, a major reason for black support for liberalism could lose its appeal to blacks. On the other hand, if liberalism continues to portray blacks as victims of white racism, more white Americans will regard liberalism as phony—or worse, as stirring up racial tensions for political gain.
Most whites are tired of racial tension, tired of being portrayed as racist, tired of their children being taught in college that they are either consciously or unconsciously racist, tired of lowering standards for blacks or anyone else.”
And so it is not only up to President-Elect Obama, the media, Democrats and academics to push us toward cherished “racial harmony,” but up to the so-called “black community” itself. Admiring the self-reliance of someone like (Republican) Booker T. Washington, and at the very least, learning about Michael Steele along with the black role models above, would be a strong and overdue step.
HowardWasRight 
more...
more... 
