The Politics Of Race In Politics

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a perplexing and important question to ask, and I'm extremely interested in hearing your answers. Please don't hesitate to leave your answer in the comment section below. Ready or not, here comes the question...


Have we reached the absolute rock bottom with “identity politics”? If we haven't, I personally believe we're so close to the bottom as to find it virtually indistinguishable from the actual bottom.

Late last week, democrat (lowercase for disrespect) Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, who is also the Assistant democratic “leader” in the House of Representatives took a verbal shot at the South Carolina Republican senator, Tim Scott, saying, “If you call progress electing a person with the pigmentation that he has, who votes against the interest and aspirations of 95 percent of the black people in South Carolina, then I guess that’s progress.” Really?!

Isn't the job of every senator, from every state, to represent every citizen of their respective states? Isn't the entire point of having a state-wide campaign to attempt to appeal to more of the voters in the entire state than your opponent? I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's no senator for the east/west or north/south sections of any state. I'm also positive there's no senator exclusively for blacks or whites or hispanics or asians, etc.

Clyburn's remark comes just over a week after another black democrat representative made disparaging comments about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. A remark which Clyburn refused to denounce, by the way. Mississippi democrat Bennie Thompson described the accomplished Justice Thomas as an “Uncle Tom” and said Thomas “doesn't like being black” during an interview on a Mississippi radio station.

Everyone remembers Harry Reid-iculous lambasting Nevada rancher, Cliven Bundy, for his use of the word “negro” - something that is utterly absurd, given that it was just a few short years ago that Mr. Reid-iculous used that very word when describing then-candidate Obama. The response from the democrat “leadership” to these latest racial slurs – crickets chirping.

While I find Clyburn's and Thompson's remarks remarkably disgusting, close-minded, and certainly divisive, I do not find them necessarily “racist.” They are, however, stunning examples of racialism.

Racialism is defined in Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary as “a theory that race determines human traits and capacities.” The World English Dictionary definition is “1. the belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by heredity factors and that this endows some races with an intrinsic superiority over others. 2. abusive or aggressive behavior towards members of another race on the basis of such a belief.”

It's the last definition that's most applicable to Clyburn and Thompson, but not in that blacks have an “intrinsic superiority.” Liberals like Clyburn and Thompson, by virtue of their ties with the democrat party, believe that black people have an intrinsic inferiority. Just look at the democrat party's record of institutionalized racism. Could there be a more dichotomous position for someone to take?

By attacking Senator Scott and Justice Thomas, Clyburn and Thompson have essentially said without saying that they believe blacks to be incapable of critical thinking and should fall in line with what their “leaders” say they should do. They've sold out Martin Luther King's dream by insisting that the color of one's skin does matter, apparently more than the content of their character. Clyburn's slam against Senator Scott, in which he effectively says Scott votes against the color of his own skin, is a particularly blatant example of this tribal thinking.

The democrat party is the party that divides people into groups based on economics, race, religion, and a whole host of other categories, none of which have anything whatsoever to do with a person's character. They are the originators of identity politics. Look no further than the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, the fight against every single piece of civil rights legislation proposed after the end of the Civil War, often filibustering them. This is a matter of historical record. Also a matter of history is that the first twenty-three black members of Congress were Republican. Coincidence? I think not. The first black democrat wasn't elected until 1935. Again, I don't think this was a coincidence.

People blame the mythical, and I emphasize mythical, “party switch” or “ideology switch” for the nearly wholesale departure of blacks from the Republican party – that they became suddenly, inexplicably, and virulently racist, and the democrats became the party of inclusion. I hate to disabuse them of this notion, but it was George Wallace standing against desegregation, not Republicans.

I reiterate – the primary function of a senator from any state is to represent the interests of every citizen of their state. Ethnicity has no place in politics. No person should be elected because they are, or are not, any particular race, and they certainly should not be expected to vote according to skin color. Clyburn, Thompson, and the countless others who interject race into politics are repugnant, and are the very antithesis of MLK's dream. It's time to vote them out of office and replace them with people who value all people. ~ Hunter