Booker Rising has spent a good deal of ink over the past week or so highlighting the conflicted position of many black Republicans. I should say more properly, Black Republicans are conflicted. I was once a Black Republican but now I am not.
A Black Republican is one who is in a power game for black people. It might also be said that they are in a power game with black people. It depends upon your level of skepticism. The basic Black Republican premise is that the Republican party is good for the race, and if not, at least gives a power alternative. It's an attractive argument, one I've made early on. But the bottom line is that a Black Republican is Black first and last. As such, they could be called opportunists, or pragmatists.
We've also had discussions over the provenance of conservative blacks vs black conservatives. I an my fellow black political pundits tend to agree that most of the on-air personalities and pundits tend to be 'black conservatives' whereas conservative blacks are generally ignored.
To clear things up about me, I am a conservative black who votes Republican. I am ideologically oriented and the Republican party is the only party that is consistently aligned with my set of values (more or less). I am ideologically opposed to the Leftism of the Democrats, and any number of other tenets they claim.
But the point of my comic today is that many people presume from a pseudo-historical perspective that none of the above distinctions matter. That the future will always consider an Obama victory in racial terms, and as a positive thing for the race. That may be true enough, but it is not completely true. Or perhaps I should say that those who tend to see things racially rather than ideologically tend to believe others must as well.
A similar kind of whitewash goes on with the Evangelicals and the Secular Humanists. They tend to regard the Republican party as an agent or enemy of their beliefs. Neither is true, but it is true enough to maintain the fiction.
This state of affairs has put me off of politics, as I perceive too much of an identity component in the way Americans are playing the game. It might have been bearable if Obama hadn't mastered the game and invited more dupes to his way of doing things. But this is how folks want to do it. Just like the self-important gesticulations of Greenies, it doesn't change the planet, it just changes the attitude of people riding it. We do have the consolation however, that a real appreciation of the planet exists as well as for the economy and geopolitical matters of war and peace in great Americans and that the populist tsunami won't wash away the infrastructure supporting those great Americans.
At any rate, I continue to mock those whose worlds are rocked by the person of Obama. On days like these, I rather wish that Edwards had run a better campaign.
UPDATE: Some tangent of this discussion has veered to the purported universality of identity politics and my part in it. I offer several prior posts that refute that position:
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