RSS Feed MenuMichael Steele has discovered a new tool for recruiting more blacks to the Republican Party: chicken and potato salad. Seriously! When I initially heard about Steele’s remarks, I laughed in disbelief and told the person explaining it to me: “No, way.” Well… then I watched the clip on YouTube.
A Hoosier Access reporter asked the RNC Chairman the following question at the Young Republicans convention in Indianapolis in July:
“I wanted to ask you regarding your inclusion of diverse populations in the Republican party. What is your plan moving forward?”
Steele responds: “My plan is to say y’all come. Cause a lot of you are already here.”
Unidentified person shouts: “I’ll bring the collard greens.”
Steele adds: “There you go. I got the fried chicken and the potato salad.”
I’m surprised someone didn’t say they’d bring the watermelons. The assumption in this food banter is all black people are the same, they love to sop up collard greens, fried chicken and potato salad. What’s ironic is moments after making these comments, Steele says the Republican party “welcomes and embraces” people of different backgrounds. Not with comments like that you won’t.
In fact, the person who told me about the remarks is a young, white Republican who found the comments “off-putting” at best. She went on to explain that she thinks it demonstrates Steele’s struggle with being a black Republican while at the same time acting as the voice of a party most uncomfortable with discussing issues of race and diversity. If Steele, as the first black chairman of the RNC can’t be effective in recruiting more black voters, then who can?
Numerous opportunities have arisen over the summer for Steele to recast the GOP as a more tolerant, dare I suggest, compassionate party of diversity. But he has remained strangely silent this summer on such topics as the racist comments uttered by various GOP folks and most recently the Gates arrest.
Steele’s remarks and the outcome of the Young Republicans Convention, where racist Audra Shay was elected its new chairman, doesn’t bode well for the GOP’s future. Someone commented to me that sadly the state of the Young Republicans is just a mirror image of what’s going on in the Grand Old Party. This person even said recently, while attending an event at the Heritage Foundation with a woman in her fifties, that the woman glanced around the room, shaking her head and remarked, “I guess we’re just going to have to wait until all these old people die off for the party to change.”
The party’s outward image doesn’t look like the welcome mat for diversity. Just for kicks I visited the Young Republican National Federation website. Its leadership is almost exclusively white and its promotional video “This is my party” is pure vanilla, no chocolate or strawberry in sight.
The GOP needs to move into the MODERN world: stop viewing ethnic groups through stereotypes, tune into what’s really important to voters and identify issues where the GOP shares common ground with groups. Leave the finger licking good comments to Colonel Sanders and get the PARTY started, y’all hear?
ottovbvs // Aug 1, 2009 at 4:47 am
barker13 // Jul 31, 2009 at 11:23 pm
“tell me if it sounds like he took my “Die, Otto, Die” in the spirit it was meant or did the purposeful, obvious disconnect between the “disagree without being disagreeable” and “Die, Otto, Die” lines ”
……..Q.E.D.
sinz54 // Aug 1, 2009 at 8:30 pm
barker13 sez: “DIE, OTTO, DIE… DIE, DIE, DIE! DIE, OTTO, DIE… DIE, DIE, DIE! DIE, OTTO, DIE… DIE, DIE, DIE!”
Yes, we’re well on the way to creating a new conservative majority that can win again.
barker13 // Aug 2, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Re: Sinz54 // Aug 1, 2009 at 8:30 pm –
Sinz… are you stupid…??? (Hey… if Obama can throw the “s” word around…) (*SHRUG*)
Seriously?
I expect stuff to fly right over Otto’s head, but you… as much as you can be thick as a frigg’n brick at times I didn’t think you were this oblivious.
AGAIN… my Jul 31, 2009 at 7:17 pm post’s postscript was OBVIOUSLY meant as a wiseass “riff” of:
* Anyway… we can disagree without being disagreeable.
* Right…???
The “chuckle” should have reinforced this.
Hey… I don’t mind people taking me to task for what I clearly mean… but to so nakedly distort my OBVIOUSLY meaning is just… weak.
BILL
Political Season // Aug 3, 2009 at 7:46 am
@sinz54
The idea that blacks are so besotted by identity politics they can never be lured from the democratic party is defeatist nonsense and an easy excuse to avoid addressing the poor relationship the GOP has with this political constituency. Further, Obama is simply the easy at hand excuse the GOP makes today, but he just got here. What about all the years before that when the GOP used the same excuse.
As for Steele, for the love of God, why does he trade in this stereotypical language? If anybody ought to be paying attention to the language they use as they try to create a better relationship between blacks and the GOP, its the RNC Chairman. However, Steele, because he is black, clearly believes he gets a pass to play with these types of stereotypes. Didn’t we just get get treated to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor getting lectured by Cong. Grassly about how his career would be over if he had made a comment akin to her “wise Latina” statement? How is this any different? A white RNC chair would be excoriated for a comment like that, but Steele gets a pass because he’s black? Steele clearly thinks so, because he uses this kind of language frequently.
It betrays the fact that his thinking is as moribund, defeatist and disinterested in blacks as a political constituency as the rank and file and the rest of the GOP leadership. The GOP record with Latinos is no better. They lost that vote this go around by talking out of both sides o f their mouth on the issues. The GOPs political appeal more and more is relying on harsh rhetoric and appeals by red meat commentators coded overtly and covertly with racial undertones. The GOP blows this aspect of their political practice so badly and so unnecessarily that it would be funny if it were not so pathetic.
ottovbvs // Aug 3, 2009 at 3:44 pm
political-season // Aug 3, 2009 at 7:46 am
“As for Steele, for the love of God, why does he trade in this stereotypical language?”
………..Steele is a few notches brighter than Palin but that’s not saying much……..For a position that is basically all about communication and organization the guy is a non starter………but who am I to complain…….have at it Mikey