Why more Black conservatives don’t join the Republican Party
One evening, freshman year, in our historically Black university’s theater-lit auditorium, a student explained why he was a Republican. The occasion was one of the semester’s mandatory civic seminars; the topic was the country’s two-party system. He was joined by other panelists: a couple of undergrads and a couple of faculty members — all of whom had problems with his party of choice. The Republican brand isn’t respected in much of Black America, so the audience would be tough, but he gave it the old college try.
His reasoning seemed sound. The Republican Party was a good fit for him because of its commitment to business and entrepreneurship, he said. By his lights, those things could deliver on the American Dream in a way that government could not — or would not. He had proof. Struggling to pay for used textbooks the previous semester, he spent his last few dollars on soap and ladder, bucket and brush. And off he went. Door to door, cleaning windows, earning enough to buy books, and creating a stream of income more helpful than any federal loan refund he’d received.
A little buzz built in the hall, full of aspiring professionals with entrepreneurial ideas, waiting for the part that was supposed to be objectionable. The professor on the other end of the stage, in the gentle manner of an elder, hushed the murmuring with a question: “Congratulations, young man, on that ladder you bought. But would you be here tonight if you didn’t get those federal loans? And what will happen if you fall and break an arm or a leg or something? You might be a conservative, but I doubt you’re a Republican.”
This obvious distinction felt fresh to the room. The shortcut in contemporary American politics has long been that conservatives are Republicans. To be one is to be the other. Even we freshmen knew that. We also knew that Republicans are mostly White, that they surrendered leadership on civil rights to Democrats, and that the threats they saw to their way of life always seemed to look like us.
A lot of Republicans today have been forced to make the distinction for themselves. Are they Republican because of a belief in small government and fiscal austerity, or because they don’t like certain people who benefit from their tax dollars? Is it because individualism and law and order are fundamental to free societies, or because they’re the things you use to keep those other people in check? Whatever the answers, if it’s all principle and no animus, why are 85 percent of GOP voters and 90 percent of its congressional caucus White? Even we freshmen back then knew lots of Black folks who held conservative values. Why aren’t they in the “conservative” party?
In today’s GOP, principled conservatism co-stars with racial grievance. And leadership is increasingly loyal to the people who stormed the Capitol. It has become a cult of personality, too. Led by standard-bearer Donald Trump, who, by proxy, offers the most public approximation of what it means to be a conservative anymore. That particular strain of American conservatism — theatrical and intolerant and not caring whether you break a leg — is now dominant in the party and cannot stay out of the spotlight.
Black conservatism, perhaps like the version practiced by that student onstage, is proof that other, better versions exist. It practices moral individualism, less concerned with group differences than independence and self-determination. It doesn’t like to be told what to do — the desires of institutions and authority figures factor low in decision-making. And it’s respectable, prioritizing a certain public presentation — diction, dress, etiquette, and the like — in hopes of improving opportunities and outcomes, equality and justice.
But one thing Black conservatism is not is colorblind. It knows racism is real and sees its hand in disparities of all sorts. Health care and education. Business and criminal justice. It knows what the Civil War was about and why banning books is bad. And that people in democratic societies have responsibilities to one another, especially to those who come from histories shaped by the intentional deprivation of liberty. That doesn’t sound very much like today’s Republican Party.
Or the Republican Party of my freshman year. Which is why the student onstage made such a memorable character. He conceded the party had a race problem but acted as though his devotion to bootstrapping and business — with bucket and brush, soap and ladder — could whitewash it away. A lot of principled conservatives are now supporting something similar, pushing the party’s growing challenge to democracy offstage. Electing party leaders who exile those choosing principle over partisanship. Deepening the party’s devotion to a celebrity who angrily monologues about the people who need to be put in their place.
The auditorium audience was tough that evening, yet we wanted only success for our conservative classmate. And for his quieter fellow travelers sprinkled throughout the hall and throughout the country today. To the exceedingly few who insist on playing a role in today’s Republican Party, hoping to recast it in a new and more welcoming light: Good luck, brother. Break a leg.