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A black Republican? Think about it
Sep 15, 2008 - Tallahassee Democrat

If you are black and do one or more of the following: talk "white," wear your pants with purpose, marry outside your race, or refuse to follow conventions of the old "one-drop" rule and classify yourself as black and black alone, your blackness, at some point in your life, will be called into question by other black folks.

If you're black and a Republican, you're probably the target of a line of questioning about your loyalties right about... now.

Just ask Kamilah Prince.

Prince, a 30-year-old Tallahassee transplant from Ohio, has spent the last nine years championing GOP ideals in the administrations of governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist. And though raised by Republican parents, she disagrees with her mom and dad about the best choice for our next commander in chief.

Exasperation resonates in her voice with when she's asked about having to qualify her decision to support John McCain.

"It's like you're racist or an Uncle Tom if you don't support Barack," said Prince, who wears a number of hats at McCain's Tallahassee-based Southeast regional campaign headquarters. "But it's not about race, it's about my beliefs."

Those beliefs include "economic empowerment, educational choice, access to information and empowering the potential of the individual," as self-proclaimed "hip-hop Republican" Lenny McAllister wrote in his Aug. 20 theRoot.com essay, "We Down with GOP," playing on the title of a popular early '90s rap song.

I've long been curious about black Republicans and why they choose to side with the party of 41 and 43. My (vaguely unpolitical) family celebrated when President Bill Clinton ousted George H.W. Bush in 1992.

But around the time I reached voting age, I began to read and learn more about blacks "coming home" to the party of Frederick Douglass and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as one Essence magazine contributor wrote in an article I read circa 1998.

Thumbing through the pages of the article as I waited for my tresses to dry during a marathon hair appointment (back when I had a relaxer), I decided then, and still believe, that more blacks should research the party's ideals and vote Republican — if for no other reason than to avoid the political eggs/basket disaster we too often find ourselves in when voting as a Democratic bloc.

Formerly maligned by the mainstream "black community," black Republicans are winning more respect and recognition as candidates such as U.S. House contender Deborah Honeycutt of Georgia and Florida House candidate Peter Boulware earn political clout.

Why are black Republicans gaining more attention these days? It's a matter, in part, of them keeping pace with their increasingly prominent Democratic counterparts. Their involvement and candidacies fill a gaping hole in the GOP's post-Goldwater political tapestry.

How do they carry the GOP banner with pride? By realizing that as the Bible, the actions of its believers and the squawkings of televangelists who hawk fringe messages with extreme zealotry are altogether different, so are the principles, politics and punditry associated with thinking, being and voting Republican.

Modern black Republicans align themselves with the party because of their beliefs in its core values, not because they wholly trust the actions of its leaders or choose to ignore the railings of its most radical proponents.

On the roll of the Republican faithful you'll find trailblazers such as Douglass, King and current and former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell — blacks who have launched themselves by being visionaries instead of victims, both within the Republican Party and the world at large.

An abstract thinker can find some of the core Republican values McAllister wrote about manifested in seemingly odd places such as the Nguzo Saba, or seven principles of Kwanzaa. Consider Umoja (family and community), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Nia (purpose) and Imani (faith).

And there is perhaps no greater realm where the black mainstream lines up with basic conservative values than under the mantle of faith.

"If you gave blacks a litmus test on traditional GOP values, they'd pass as conservatives," said Chuck Hobbs, a Tallahassee attorney who serves as legal counsel for the Tallahassee branch of the NAACP.

Like Hobbs, I've become more conservative with each passing year and more tolerant and even understanding of Republican ideals.

Still, there are factors (aside from my commitment, as a journalist, not to commit to a party) that keep the letters NPA printed on my voter-registration card.

I'm unsold on the party's current trajectory, and I certainly sympathize with rapper Kanye West's post-Katrina observations about the lack of compassion our current presidential administration has shown black people.

I have trouble with the oversimplification in the Republican Party of Florida's statement that "there are no victims of circumstance," and that "we all have the power to build our own futures if we have the right tools and knowledge at hand."

"If." Two little letters that ignore how generations of denied access and a lack of knowledge continue to impede the progress of too many black Americans. It's hard to tell someone to abide by the "know better, do better" adage if few before them knew how to do any better.

Nonetheless, at the core of their argument, black Republicans are right. Black Americans, just like everyone else in America, hold the power to attain their own freedoms, assert their own positions and advance their own political agendas if they choose to. Once we stop leaving decision and policy making wholly up to individual politicians, major political parties (of either stripe) and the government, we can begin to better manifest our own destiny.

What the black Republicans who herald their own success stories have done, and what others — regardless of their political affiliations — must do, is encapsulate the wounds of the past and trade them for a shrewd sense of political pragmatism.

That's what female, Hispanic and other minority Republicans (rarely questioned about their decision to vote GOP) have discovered, and it's one factor that politically and economically propels those groups forward.

And that, I'd wager, is what black Republicans are waiting for more of their brethren on the other side to figure out.

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