[Occupymendocino] National Black Republican Politicians React to Racism

[Richard Karch]

National Black Republican Politicians React to Racism
by Robin Marty
June 23, 2015
10:00 am


When the Charleston shooter was caught by police after murdering nine African Americans in their place of worship, he told the authorities that his goal was to start a race war. That isn’t happening, but America is having its frankest discussion about inherent and systematic racism yet, and it’s being joined by some rather unusual players.

Members of the GOP.

Often, the Republican party tries to avoid the racism talk. When the topic comes up they’ll deflect by reminding everyone that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, or that traditionally it was southern Democrats who fought against civil rights, conveniently ignoring the party shift that occurred after the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, causing southerner Democrats to deflect and join the GOP.

The Charleston murders have now made this a topic impossible to ignore or deflect. The shooter claims he was inspired by the talking points of Council of Concerned Conservatives, and since that revelation the country has learned that the leader of the white supremacist hate group has donated tens of thousands to GOP politicians and action groups in the last few election cycles. Actively engaging in this new discussion is some of the people who have the best likelihood of actually effecting change in the ranks: black GOP leaders.

Utah Rep. Mia Love, the first African American Republican woman to be elected to Congress, has announced she will return the $1000 in campaign donations she received from Earl Holt, joining her fellow Republicans in repudiating his financial support. Love was just one of the many Tea Party candidates that Holt gave donations to in the 2014 cycle.

More loudly leading the conversation around racism is presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson. While his fellow candidates danced around whether the church shooting was a racially motivated hate crime, and whether the country needed to stop and examine its continuing history of racism, Carson cut straight to the chase.

“Not everything is about race in this country,” Carson stated in an op-ed in USA Today. “But when it is about race, then it just is. So when a guy who has been depicted wearing a jacket featuring an apartheid-era Rhodesian flag allegedly walks into a historic black church and guns down nine African-American worshipers at a Bible study meeting, common sense leads one to believe his motivations are based in racism. When a survivor of the ordeal reports that the killer shouted before opening fire, ‘You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go’ — well, that sounds to me a lot like racial hatred.”

“Let’s call this sickness what it is, so we can get on with the healing,” he added. “If this were a medical disease, and all the doctors recognized the symptoms but refused to make the diagnosis for fear of offending the patient, we could call it madness. But there are people who are claiming that they can lead this country who dare not call this tragedy an act of racism, a hate crime, for fear of offending a particular segment of the electorate.”

Carson isn’t the only one calling out his party for not accepting the shooting as a racist act, either. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, one of just two African American sitting senators and one of two who represents the state in which the shooting occurred, urged everyone to recognize the murder for what it was: a hate crime.  “When we look for the reasons why this happened, it’s hard to understand when evil is just overtaking our heart. The mind is just demented. This was obviously a case of racism. His actions were driven by hatred,” he told CBS.

Scott later stood with South Carolina’s Republican Governor Nikki Haley in a call to ask the legislature to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse. The flag has only been flying since the early 1960s, allegedly as an angry response to efforts to end segregation. Although he had not said specifically that he believed the flag should be removed before Haley’s press conference, he did state that a needed debate would be “coming soon.”

Less willing to take a stand in favor of bringing the flag down? Former Florida Congressman Allen West. The Tea Party politician wrote a piece defending the flag earlier this week. West, as Care2.com’s Chris Sosa reported, also received funding from Earl Holt for his “Allen West Guardian Fund.”



Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/national-black-republican-politicians-react-to-racism.html#ixzz3dzfsDx2t
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