Posted on September 17, 2010

Steele Seems Slow to Grasp Issues of Race

Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 17, 2010

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele {snip} the highest-ranking negro in the GOP has always been quick to trade on racial stereotypes if he thought they could bring him even a scintilla of political or cultural cachet.

Meanwhile, Mr. Steele can always be counted on to scrupulously look the other way when black folks are insulted by powerful white conservatives like Rush Limbaugh. {snip}

{snip} Instead of a principled outreach campaign designed to broaden the Republican tent, all we ever get from Mr. Steele is more condescension and buck-dancing in high places.

{snip} here’s how Mr. Steele weakly handled questions from CNN’s John King about former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s latest putdown connected to the race of President Barack Obama.

King: Former Speaker of the House, the man who is moving around as if he might run for president, said that the president of the United States has a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” view of the world.

{snip}

King: Is that an appropriate way to have this conversation, as a Republican leader and as a black man? Is that how you want to have this conversation?

Steele: I don’t see what being black has to do with it, but . . .

King: You don’t think saying the president has a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview is perhaps trying to play to the lowest common denominator in politics?

{snip}

King: So, you don’t think it’s race-baiting or playing to the birther crowd?

Steele: No, I don’t. I don’t see that stretch. I know some folks out there want to, but I don’t see that. I know Newt. I know that’s not his mindset on that. He’s talking about a worldview that comes from a different part, whether it’s Europe, the African continent.

{snip}

The RNC chairman’s knee-jerk defense of Mr. Gingrich is so bizarre and off-putting that even a normally unflappable CNN anchor has to wonder whether he’s being punked. How is such intellectual laziness and obsequiousness by a black politician even possible in the post-1865 world?

Last weekend, the National Federation of Republican Women’s board of directors threw a shindig in Charleston, S.C., that would have warmed the cockles of Mr. Steele’s heart. Photos of the gala called “The Southern Experience” have begun circulating.

The photos feature South Carolina’s state Senate president, Glenn McConnell, dressed in Civil War clothing. In one photo, Mr. McConnell is flanked by two African-American Civil War re-enactors, a black man and woman dressed in antebellum slavery garb. All three are smiling.

{snip}

Usually, when black folks see photos like these, there is a lot of soul searching. We wonder aloud what it takes to make someone drop every vestige of dignity to embody the myth of the happy-go-lucky slave? What kind of paychecks are we talking about?

In a way, the photos of the “happy slaves” at the Southern Experience party shine a perverse light on Mr. Steele’s tenure at the RNC. He’s playing the role expected of him. It’s just another example of the pro-colonial, know-your-place, anti-insurrection attitude Newt Gingrich considers deeply American.