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The Black Conservative Conundrum
A few months ago, Sunny Hostin, a black host on The View, said she didn’t understand black Republicans and that a black Republican was an oxymoron. Nichole Hanna-Jones made a similar declaration during the Trump/Biden presidential race after Joe Biden told a black on-air-personality, “If you’re for Trump. Then you ain’t black.”
Hanna-Jones tweeted, in the midst of the Biden backlash from conservatives, “There is a difference between being politically black and being racially black. We all know this and should stop pretending that we don’t.”
When other black people asked Hanna-Jones what she meant, she replied, “If you don’t understand the difference between being/designated a certain race and taking up a particular set of racial politics, I am not going to educate you.”
Hanna-Jones’s choice of words was an education in itself.
Racially black is to be designated or characterized in a certain way. Therefore, being designated black in America means being “characterized” by a racist white society, and black Republicans/ conservatives embrace a “certain way” of being black that is acceptable to white racists.
Distinguished political scientist Ronald W. Walters once listed how black conservatives make themselves acceptable within a racist white society. 1). Accommodates the existing political…