Towson Student Advocates for Segregation at CPAC Event

A Towson University student made national news at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday when he suggested segregating black Republicans from the rest of the party.

A Black Republican from Alabama, K Carl Smith, hosted a panel called “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You’re Not One?” Calling himself a “Frederick Douglass Republican,” Smith’s panel was meant to address the Republican Party’s struggles to attract black and minority voters.

But during the question-and-answer period, Scott Terry, a member of the White Students Union at Towson University, said the GOP would be better as “Booker T. Washington Republicans” — “united like the hand, but separate like the fingers.”

The exchanged was filmed and posted on the liberal blog ThinkProgress Friday. After the panel, the blog reported that Terry said, “why can’t we just have segregation?” noting the Constitution’s protections for freedom of association.

Matthew Heimbach, who styles himself founder and commander of Towson’s White Student Union, said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun that he was also at the event with about 30 members of his group.

“Diversity is not a strength,” he said, adding that the Republican party should be focusing its efforts on boosting white voter turnout rather than wooing minorities. {snip}

“We’re being displaced from our own country,” Heimbach said of Hispanic immigration, adding that he does not see segregation among people already inside the United States as any great problem.

“We self-segregate as it is,” Heimbach added, noting that one of the speakers on the panel said he went to an all-black church.  “I really don’t think we have any other choice, it’s just human nature.”

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Heimbach’s activities have attracted the attention of civil rights outfit the Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently wrote that he could be a leader in the “future of organized hate,” and put his organization on its Hate Map, which tracks extremist groups.

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