An abridged version of this article was originally published on Wrongspeak Publishing.
It is often said that X (formerly known as Twitter) is not the real world; however, it’s a place for sharing ideas that impact the real world. This past year on X has exposed me to certain aspects of the thinking of the Republican Party and the conservative movement in America. Seeing that my political disposition as an outsider to the US is skewed in favor of Republicans, I mostly follow and interact with conservative Republican accounts on X. One thing that has come out strong is the fact that right-wing Twitter is doing a lot of damage to the conservative movement. Permit me, for the sake of this article, to equate “right wing” with Republican and conservative, even though they may technically not be the same things, but they are close enough, so I’ll use them interchangeably.
When I first started interacting with Americans online, one thing that struck me as odd was the fact that African Americans voted overwhelmingly for the liberal Democratic party instead of the conservative Republican party, with only 8% of Blacks identifying as Republicans in 2016, according to blackdemographics.com. This didn’t make sense to me, as I suspected that Black people in America would be more conservative. I suspected they would favor such traditional values as strong family ties, discipline of children, religious participation, and being more conservative on things like homosexuality and transgenderism than their White peers.
Continued interactions with African Americans have proven my suspicions to be mostly correct. For example, it is often joked that Black kids don’t talk back at their parents the way White kids do or that Black people discipline their kids and would employ corporal punishment in doing so. This confirmed to me that Black America is at least more socially conservative than White America, but why are African Americans not as politically conservative? Why do they tend to vote Democrat in droves?
This was even more confusing since it was the Republican Party of Lincoln that freed the slaves and gave Black people their first platforms for political participation. If at all, African Americans should be beholden to the Republican Party for generations, so why aren’t they?
Several explanations have been given for this, one being that Black Americans have bought into the lies of the Democratic Party about Republicans being racist and evil. Recently, a Black man on Twitter made the case that the Republican party had to diversify or it will die, to which the response from a conservative account was,
“conservatives aren’t the problem. It’s the DNC’s control of the media that bombards Blacks with narratives about the White devil that we can’t get over.”
Another reason that is often given is that Democrats “"virtue signal”" to Black people using welfare, DEI, and affirmative action policies. On the surface, these explanations made sense; they seemed sufficient to explain African American voting behavior. Candace Owens often makes it a point to note that Blacks are beholden to the Democratic plantation. But as I gained more insight, I’ve come to realize that there is more to this and that there is perhaps a defensible logic behind African American voting behavior. This, in my estimation, has something to do with the behavior of the Republican Party itself. It is not for no reason that the Republican Party is a huge turn-off for Black Americans.
The first reason that became apparent to me is that the Republican Party has sort of given up on courting Black voters, believing Blacks would always vote Democrat. They refuse to commit resources to campaigns that would get them more Black voters. In the tweet I quoted earlier, an X user made that argument by saying,
“You cannot court what you disdain. The GOP will drain itself rather than craft conservative policy to attract new voters”
It seems many Black people feel the Republican Party doesn’t want them, and Republicans aren’t even trying to change that perception.
Republicans often complain that African Americans believe the lies about them that they are being fed by Democrats, if that’s true, it must be because Republicans have let Democrats craft their image before Black people. And when you leave your image at the hands of the opposition, they would do with it as they wish. You can’t blame Black people for not buying what’s not offered for sale. The truth is, the Republican party has not offered itself as an attractive option to Black Americans.
Republicans might argue this point and say, “that’s not true; we are open to doing business with Black Americans; they are just not buying what we are selling.” This brings the next issue to the table. Republican words sometimes don’t match their actions. Heck they don’t even make it easy for Black conservatives; Dan Bongino stated as much of late. I have seen multiple times: Black conservatives being called woke, BLM supporters being accused of playing the victim for taking a position that conservatives view as pro-Black—whatever pro-Black means.
Rob Smith, a Black and gay Republican, was recently harassed by some White Republicans at a conservative event. Watching a clip of the harassment video, it was astonishing to see that Rob, a prominent Black conservative who has been very vocal about his support for Trump, the Republican Party, and conservatives, would be treated in such a manner. Some of the people who harassed him even came on Twitter to gloat about chasing him off. Consequently, there were many Black accounts on X who responded with the sentiment, “I told you so.”
Another reason I suspect for Black loathing of the Republican Party is that Republicans seem to be dismissive of the concerns of Black people; they seem to take every opportunity to demean Black people and are often insensitive to their sensibilities. Given this reality, I can see why Black people would not want to associate with a party that has such an attitude towards them.
One of the things Black people sometimes complain about in America is that they are often the victims of police harassment and brutality. This is mostly dismissed by those on the right as Black people playing the victim, but what does the evidence say? Are Black people paranoid about the police? Are they just making stuff up? Let’s look at the evidence provided by Roland Fryer, a Black researcher who many right-wingers hold in high esteem because, in their minds, the result of his research confirms their position that the police are not disproportionately killing Black people when compared with White people. If you listened to a conservative talk about Fryer’s research, you would think that the only thing the research showed was no disparity in police killings of unarmed Black people versus unarmed White people. But that is not all there is to that study. Fryer lamented that both left and right misunderstand and misrepresent the empirical data he provided.
His study had been so misinterpreted that Fryer, in a Wall Street Journal article had to clarify his position. He opened that op-ed with the following statements:
“I have led two starkly different lives—that of a Southern black boy who grew up without a mother and knows what it's like to swallow the bitter pill of police brutality, and that of an economics nerd who believes in the power of data to inform effective policy.
In 2015, after watching Walter Scott get gunned down, on video, by a North Charleston, S.C., police officer, I set out on a mission to quantify racial differences in police use of force. To my dismay, this work has been widely misrepresented and misused by people on both sides of the ideological aisle. It has been wrongly cited as evidence that there is no racism in policing, that football players have no right to kneel during the national anthem, and that the police should shoot black people more often.
As for what his research shows, Fryer claims the following:
"There are large racial differences in police use of nonlethal force."
"Compliance by civilians doesn't eliminate racial differences in police use of force."
"We didn't find racial differences in officer-involved shootings."
Some conservatives like to point to this last finding to rebut claims of racial disparities in policing without noting that Fryer's other findings from the same research suggest just the opposite, nor do they note the limitations of Fryer's research (which he himself is quick to acknowledge). This section was culled from Reason Magazine
The study itself revealed something even more worrying and confirmed the assertions of Black people about police brutality. Fryer’s research showed that Black people were disproportionate targets of police harassment and violence only up until it came to killing them. What this means is that even if the police were not more likely to kill a Black person, they were more likely to stop a Black person, question them, handcuff them, and use non-lethal force on them than they would a White person.
This, in my opinion is a big problem; killing Black people shouldn’t be seen as the only problem with policing. If Black people are being harassed more by police for less than genuine reasons, then that is a problem, but you would never hear a conservative acknowledge this concern by Black people; you would never hear them call for better policing; rather, the Black people who voice such concerns are dismissed as BLM supporters. Every time there is a clear violation of a Black person’s rights by the police, you see all these conservative accounts mount a defense of the police. What sort of message do you think that sends to Black people? It sends the message, “"we don’t like you; we don’t care about you.”"
The most recent case is that of a female police officer who handcuffed and repeatedly tased a Black man who wasn’t resisting arrest and was compliant in every possible way. The young man was not committing any crime or acting unruly when the police officer accosted him. He was simply changing his car tyres by the roadside; he had a gun on him, which he owned legally, and announced to the cop that it was on him. This man did everything that conservatives tell Black people to do to prevent being harassed or killed by the police, yet he was still harassed by the police, confirming a key conclusion from Fryer’s research that “compliance by civilians doesn't eliminate racial differences in police use of force.” But what is even more heartbreaking is that some right-wing accounts could not see the humanity of the Black man enough to condemn the actions of the cop but found ways to rationalize them. Very famously, they quote the 13/50 stats. Black people are only 13% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; that’s why police are antsy around them. One user said the reason the cop had to tase him was because he was way bigger and taller than her and that she could be in danger.
The 13/50 lie, as I like to call it, is routinely used by conservatives, including Black conservatives like Larry Elder, to discredit Black people. One time an acquaintance of mine, a Black conservative, used that line in a conversation with me, so I asked him, “You’re a young Black man, right?”" He said yes, “which means you are a part of “the 13%” of America,” I continued. He said yes. Then I asked him. “Are you a violent criminal?” He said no, then I followed up with. “But why? Why aren’t you a criminal? You just said 13% of the population, which you happen to be a part of, commits 50% of violent crimes. By that logic, as a part of the 13%, you should be considered a violent criminal. Why are you exempting yourself?” This is the kind of rhetoric used in the right that seems to negatively stereotype Black people as violent criminals when the truth is that only a tiny proportion of this demographic commits these crimes, and that they do not commit such crimes in the name of their demographic; they just happen to be Black. There are other crimes that White people are overrepresented in, for example, White collar crimes and sexual abuse of minors, but you never hear a similar stereotype about White people. Why? I’m all for consistency. Do you want to stereotype and treat people as groups? I have no problems with that, but let’s do it across the board, or do you want to treat people as individuals? I’m all for that as well; let’s do it across the board. White people don’t get to be individuals, while Black people are avatars for their race.
Conservatives famously demean Black people by suggesting that Black people are incompetent or that any Black person in a position of authority got there because of affirmative action or DEI policies. Whenever there is a controversy around a Black person, they immediately resort to accusations of incompetence. The most recent example is the case of Claudine Gay. Claudine was one of three Ivy League school presidents who gave an answer that can be described as contextually off, and they have all had serious backlash for their answers. However, it is interesting to note that only one person—the Black person—of the three, Claudine Gay, has been accused of being incompetent. When you ask what the basis of that accusation is, what you get is that her answer showed that she was incompetent. That’s just laughable. None of those women can be said to be incompetent because of the answers they gave; the most you can say is that they were being hypocritical or having double standards; nothing in their answer revealed their competence or lack thereof, but conservative accounts were very comfortable calling specifically Claudine Gay incompetent and an affirmative action hire. New information has come out that Gay plagiarized some of her scholarly work, and she has subsequently tendered her resignation after weeks of calls for her to resign. However, the accusation of incompetence happened before any evidence of her plagiarism came to light, meaning people already formed their opinions about her before any evidence. If Gay is guilty of plagiarizing scholarly work, then I have no sympathy for her predicament. I only ask that accusations of incompetence be backed by evidence.
An X account called National Conservative had this to say in 2022:
“Are you skeptical that Harvard president Claudine Gay who is paid over $1 million per year was not chosen based on merit, but rather on her race and gender?”
Now, what was his evidence for this? As far as I can tell, he didn’t share.
Bo Winegard another right-wing account, followed by saying,
“The problem is precisely that progressives zealously promote affirmative action whose function is to privilege less qualified Black people over more qualified White people. Recognizing this is not racist; it is rational. Those who dislike it should end affirmative action.”
Is the purpose of affirmative action to promote less qualified Black people over qualified White people? Or is it to improve access to opportunities for qualified Black people to thrive? Also, wasn’t affirmative action struck down by the Supreme Court? Conservatives love to talk about equality of opportunity, but when they see a policy that is intended to achieve equality of opportunity, they kick against it. Do they really think that affirmative action is just picking or selecting any random Black person for a position they are not qualified to hold?—this can happen, but certainly not the majority of the time—or are they rightly choosing from a pool of qualified Black candidates who may not have had the opportunity to get those positions, not because they are incompetent but because of other factors?
Coveted positions are always in limited quantities, much less than the number of qualified people for such positions. Even without discrimination, given the size of the White population in America, a qualified White person is more likely to be picked over a qualified Black person. In my understanding, affirmative action works only so far as to make sure the hiring is not skewed totally in favor of one demographic. I’m not saying affirmative action policies cannot be abused to employ incompetent people; I’m saying assuming every affirmative action hire is incompetent or that every Black person is an affirmative action hire is problematic.
On further questioning of some of my conservative friends on Twitter on why they think Claudine Gay is incompetent, one of them answered that an incompetent Black person is more likely to be an affirmative action hire, and that is evidenced by when Biden said he was going to pick a Black woman as supreme court justice, to which I said, did Biden appoint Claudine Gay? Just because something is true for one Black person doesn’t mean it’s true for every Black person. He continued that his company was filled with DEI policies. He went on to say that when his company reserved certain positions for Black people, they contacted every Black person who was qualified for the position for an interview. I don’t know if that was a slip, but by admitting that his company contacted qualified Black people to interview for the position, he undermined his own argument and showed that DEI wasn’t simply to recruit incompetent people but to give access to competent people who may not have the opportunity available to them.
Do they really think that a company is that stupid to employ an incompetent Black person to meet their diversity needs? Except they mean to say there are no qualified Black people available, in which case such a company would have no choice but to employ any Black person who would always turn out to be incompetent. The assumption being that Black people are by and large incompetent.
Aren’t incompetent White people hired as well? If DEI and affirmative action are the ways to hire incompetent Black people, why and how are incompetent White people hired? DEI policies may get you the job, but they won’t keep you there, just as affirmative action may get Black students into Ivy League schools but is not a guarantee that they will graduate. The system always has a way of weeding out incompetent people.
I consider the pre-civil rights era in America to be affirmative action for White people, specifically White men. Certain opportunities were only open to White people, not because other groups were incompetent but because only Whites were allowed. A key example was that of a certain Black man, Mr. Hood who was denied admission to Emory Medical School in 1959 because, as the rejection letter states, “admission was not open to people of the Negro race.” Not because he was incompetent, not because he wasn’t qualified, but because he was Black.
Nobody seemed to say then that it was affirmative action for White people when certain opportunities was only open to White people, but it was. But even then, when such opportunities was open to only White people, they didn’t just admit or employ any White person, they largely employed White people who were competent for such positions, so why does it seem inconceivable now that affirmative action has been extended to other groups that they would employ competent Black people as well, except again the assumption is there are no competent Black people.
These are just a few examples of the sort of ideas about Black people that are held in right-wing conservative or Republican circles. Why would Black people want to associate with a group that is dismissive of their concerns, stereotypes them as criminals and welfare queens, and believes them to be incompetent? It seems unreasonable to require association from Black people when your actions are hostile towards them. Perhaps this can change in the near future.
Charles Ekokotu (Pharm. D.) is a bibliophile, prose fiction writer, poet, and playwright. His first self-published novel, Hotel Shendam—a crime fiction novel featuring a debate on race and colonialism—is available on Amazon. A very fun read! Grab a copy now!
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So much to unpack.
I stopped 'being' a black Republican many years ago, but I will tell you something you miss entirely, and that is the following. Imagine the kind of black person who takes Malcolm X seriously and looks to be a full participant in America 'by any means necessary'. Is it possible for you to imagine that there are things that Republicans deliver that Democrats don't and that those delivered goods might be useful to black Americans?
Now here's where I really stretch your imagination. Is it possible for you to imagine that there are black Americans who are psychologically healthy enough to completely disregard the racial identity imposed upon them? In other words, I don't care if somebody wants to 'take my black card'?
Put those two things together and you get the kind of individual who has enough personal power and takes his own choices seriously and is unaffected by critics and haters and anyone else because he understands his own best interests. Not the interests of the Negro Race. Not the interests of the Afrocentrics. Not the interests of the Ferguson, MO, of the NAACP, of the black quarterbacks of the NFL, of the Disney Channel, Beyonce, or the ghost of WEB duBois. HIS OWN INTERESTS.
I say if your imagination cannot see those people for who they are, then you have ingested entirely too much racial theory. Thus the burden is on you to prove why black Americans cannot be individuals but must always take the racial attitudes of the day into consideration.
Aside from that, anyone who qualifies for Emery University Medical School qualifies pretty much everywhere else in the nation, like Charles R. Drew did a generation before the letter you exemplified.
The smart ones do.