The agony and hypocrisy of Black Republicans
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who does not believe systemic racism exists and tried — and failed — to make the ridiculous phrase “woke supremacy” into a thing, is upset that Florida’s public middle school students will be taught “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
“There is no silver lining in slavery,” Scott, a Republican presidential candidate, said about Florida’s latest GOPdriven atrocity pretending to be a school curriculum. “What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans, and even raping their wives. It was just devastating. So I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly [someone] running for president — would appreciate that.”
In the grand tradition of broken clocks, Scott is occasionally right. Representative Byron Donalds of Florida joined Scott and other Black Republicans to criticize that ahistorical benchmark made possible by Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who also wants to be president. But after Donalds, who otherwise praised the new standard, said teaching “the personal benefits of slavery is wrong and needs to be adjusted,” Team DeSantis pounced. Manny Diaz Jr., Florida’s education commissioner, tweeted, “We will not back down from teaching our nation’s true history at the behest of a woke White House, nor at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman.”
And there it is — the blunt reminder to Black Republicans that their loyalties to the party and their conservatism will always be considered suspect.
Now don’t give Scott, Donalds, or other Black Republicans too much credit for challenging DeSantis this one time. It’s largely self-serving. With the Florida governor’s campaign not just on the ropes but in danger of tumbling out of the ring altogether, Scott may see an opportunity to rise as DeSantis falls. Like most other Black Republicans, Scott has stayed silent through Republican-led efforts in Florida and other states to ban dozens of books by Black authors and contour history for white comfort.
Also take note of the hypocrisy. Despite Donald Trump’s years of racism and promotion of white supremacy, high-profile Black Republicans continue to support him. Or, in Scott’s case, even defend the former president’s most odious actions, though he’s competing against him for the Republican nomination.
To protect their political necks, Black Republicans stay in lockstep with the increasingly alarming rhetoric of their party’s twice-impeached, thrice-indicted standard bearer. They know that those who don’t are summarily dissed and dismissed.
That’s what happened to Will Hurd, a Black former congressman from Texas. At last weekend’s Lincoln Dinner, a gathering for GOP presidential candidates in Iowa, he was vigorously booed for criticizing the former president.
(Black Republicans) know that soft-pedaling slavery is an old racist tactic and have still chosen adjacency to white supremacy for, at best, very conditional power.
“Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again,” Hurd said. “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.” Like an opening act no one wanted to see singing a song no one wanted to hear, he struggled to be heard over the jeers.
Polling so low that he’s unlikely to qualify for the first Republican presidential debate on Aug. 23, Hurd has already said he will not pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee — already presumed to be Trump. That will also keep him off of the debate stage.
For the past seven years, being a Republican has meant total public fidelity to Trump. That edict has persisted through a Trump-incited insurrection, his attempts to overturn a presidential election he soundly lost, and an ongoing series of legal problems resulting in dozens of charges and at least two upcoming trials. Any Republican expecting to hold onto their own voters isn’t going to risk bucking Trump now — especially with him trouncing his rivals in recent polls.
In a tweet, Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’s press secretary, accused Donalds of swinging “for liberal media fences” by criticizing the Florida governor. Both he and other members of DeSantis’s team have compared Donalds to Vice President Kamala Harris, who’s been lambasting that state’s school curriculum. Evoking liberalism and the nation’s most prominent Black Democrat is just another way of marking Donalds as standing apart from white Republicans.
It reminds me of an old expression: “Even a tick thinks that he is royal when he drinks the emperor’s blood.” No, I am not calling Black Republicans bloodsuckers. But they know that soft-pedaling slavery is an old racist tactic and have still chosen adjacency to white supremacy for, at best, very conditional power.
Now they’re learning just how conditional it is — and how quickly their allegiance is attacked because acceptance from today’s GOP demands nothing less than total capitulation to an extremist and fascist ideology.