by Roger White
On more than one occasion the new Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele has cast himself as the black anti-Obama; someone who, because of his race, age and savvy is uniquely positioned to articulate an effective counter to the President’s agenda. He’s even gone so far as to claim he would run for president himself “if God told him to.” But Steele’s early stumbles reveal more than just a lack of political finesse and humility. They reveal the deep discord between the substance of racial inclusion and the cultural and ideological limits of the GOP. They also highlight fault-lines between different factions of the black conservative movement.
Steele was elected into the leadership ranks of the national Republican Party by a hundred or so Capital insiders because the Party needed to present a face to the American electorate that neutralized the powerful multi-cultural symbolism that the Democrats embodied in the wake of Obama’s 2008 victory. It’s not that the Democrats don’t have their own racial baggage and legacy of discrimination. One could plausibly argue that Michael Steele and his top of the ticket running mate Robert Ehrlich beat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in the 2002 Maryland gubernatorial race because of Townsend’s decision to choose an obscure, white retired admiral for a running mate instead of rewarding the black communities decades long Party loyalty and electoral clout (blacks make up a third of the state’s electorate) by putting an African American on the ticket. But this much is clear. On racial justice issues, the further away we get from Reconstruction the worse the GOP looks.
Which was the main logic of Steele’s RNC candidacy. Ken Mehlman, the previous RNC chair had gone further than any other leading Republican to acknowledge the history of racism in the Party, apologize for it and devote resources to overcoming its lasting effects on the ability of the party to attract supporters in communities of color. But the insider consensus that put Steele over the top was that the Party needed some flash, someone who could speak to young people and someone who could appeal to so- called moderates. What they needed was an authentic token. This is what they got.
The typical understanding of tokenism is that it’s a tactic used by institutional decision makers to pro-actively fend off accusations of discrimination by sticking people from socially marginalized groups in high profile positions with the expectation that they won’t seek to exercise the kind of autonomy and authority that normally comes with the position. The pet token agrees to be well behaved in exchange for the privilege of representing “their” people in some highly visible capacity for a handsome fee. It’s a win-win.
There is an alternative scenario where the token’s differences may be overemphasized or made "exotic" and "glamorous." In this case the token takes on a more active role by re-enforcing old group stereotypes in an attempt to appear more authentic. The token is picked not for their
fealty to dominant cultural assumptions and attitudes but because of their willingness to be conspicuously oblivious to them. In many ways George Schuyler, the black conservative iconoclast who relied on HL Mencken and other white patrons to support his “irreverent” writing fit this definition. The presentation is at once brazen and insouciant but the substance is predictable and conservative.
This is Steele’s gig. His hip-hop posturing, his glam life like media over-exposure and his insistence on calling interviewers “baby” has the uneasy feel of a man using the chairmanship of a major party to play out a mid-life crisis. But it also gives some Republicans the illusion that Steele is making a party that is still overwhelmingly white and male, culturally relevant. The party doesn’t have to examine the policy and politically based reasons why more people in communities of color aren’t interested in the GOP. They just have to point to Steele and say what more do you people want?
But all is not well in GOP land. Not only has Steele’s style rubbed many in the rank and file the wrong way, his whole “style as substance” approach just isn’t working. Steele’s field theory--that by loosening up a little and embracing pop culture the GOP will be better able to communicate with young people--hasn’t moved the needle. After months of quoting Kool Moe Dee, showing Indian Americans “slum love” and executing his “off the hook” (or is that cuff?) public relations campaign, the party has little to show for his efforts. If it’s not too early for conservatives to criticize Obama then it’s not too early for us to look at Steele’s failures as chairman thus far.
The Kids Are All Wrong
Steele wants to bring young people back to the Republican Party. He particularly wants to outreach to youth of color. These are reasonable goals for the head of a party. In the November 2008 election Obama beat McCain with young people by almost 2 to 1. A Democracy Corps report done in late March stated that the Republican party is “growing more and more irrelevant to young people…Our survey of young people three months after the election underscores the alienation of Republicans from the millennial generation.” John McCain’s 20-something daughter going on Larry King Live and declaring the GOP out of step with young people’s concerns only underlined the point. The GOP has big problems with young voters. Steele is smart to recognize this.
But it’s a mistake to think that the way to address this is by putting the proverbial lipstick on a pig. I grew up on Hip Hop and I’m a fan but jive talk is no substitute for policy. Young people are concerned about the environment and Steele’s answer to them is “drill baby drill”- a term he coined. Young voters are worried about education and jobs and Steele mocks President Obama’s attempt to provide new stimulus money to states for school construction and school loan relief as “bling- bling.” The Republicans have offered one proposal. Give young people the option of putting their retirement money in the stock market as a way of moving towards privatizing social security. Even in economic good times young people were dubious of the idea. Today they’re dismissive.
Splits in Black Conservatism
Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Steele chairmanship will be to solidify the long standing rift between the black conservative business class and their more socially conservative allies. Black social conservatives have charged the business wing with being opportunist and using the Republican Party for self enrichment. As a young man, Steele may have started out as more of a social traditionalist than a business conservative. But after his failed stint in Seminary School in 1980’s he turned his sights to making money.
After graduating from law school in 1991 Steele went to work as a corporate lawyer and later started his own business consulting firm. Steele also chaired the pro-affirmative action Minority Business Enterprise taskforce while he was Maryland’s Lieutenant Governor and co-founded the socially moderate Republican Leadership Council.
The black business conservatives came out of Nixon’s black capitalism initiative. Nixon supported affirmative action in contracting and encouraged blacks to get their piece of the federal pie. The Philadelphia Plan, lead by Arthur Fletcher, modeled the kind of state capitalism that black conservatives like Tony Brown, and the now anti-affirmative action Ward Connelly benefited from. It also spawned the “free” market nonprofit urban activism that figures like Robert Woodson and Lee Walker have been associated with.
Clarence Thomas acknowledged his animosity towards what he called “8A Republicans” in his book My Grandfather’s Son. While at the Fairmont Conference in 1980, a seminal gathering of black conservatives pulled together by Thomas Sowell after the Reagan victory, he reflected that these were “blacks who ran businesses that received preferential treatment under a program started by the Nixon Administration. These businessmen had no interest in Professor Sowell or his ideas…all they cared about was wangling access to the incoming administration and lapping up the favors it would hand out.”
Today we see tension being played out between Ken Blackwell and Steele, who ran against one another during the RNC election. After Steele prevailed, Blackwell was among the first to criticize him after he commented that abortion was an individual choice that women must make, in an interview with GQ magazine. That statement triggered this acid Blackwell retort “Chairman Steele, as the leader of American’s Pro-life conservative party, needs to re-read the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the 2008 GOP platform. He then needs to get to work--or get out of the way.”
It’s not clear if Steele will do any of the above. But let’s hope he survives long enough to create more embarrassment for the party and teach the insiders who voted him the difference between what needs to be done to achieve real social and political inclusion and party tokenism.
Roger White is a criminal justice researcher and writer currently living in Sacramento Ca. He’s the author of the 2005 book Post Colonial Anarchism and has written articles for numerous publications including Left Turn, and criminal justice journal The Fortune Society. He is currently working on a book on black conservatism in the U.S.
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