Know Where You Are

Coby Dillard is tired of black conservative pundits engaging in blatant pandering. (Hat tip to Booker Rising)

I’m feeling some kinda way about my fellow black conservatives, so...this is for us.

Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed that more and more of us are stepping out into the public eye. While that’s great, a couple things over the last week have also really disturbed me...[including] the defense of the Family Leader’s pledge that Rep. Bachmann signed (that, of course, has now been edited).

Why are these things disturbing to me? Because they’re showing that we’re trying too hard to be down for the cause…and in that trying too hard, we’re losing ourselves and forgetting where we come from.

I get the emotion, the passion, the conviction. That’s needed. What isn’t is the-calling it by its name-pandering. We don’t have to prove our conservatism-be it urban, social, fiscal, whatever-to anyone. Our message, on its merits alone, can resonate anywhere, without having to play to the sympathies of those who are, too often, our biggest supporters. And if that’s the sole reason we do it-appeasement-then what will that really say about our “conviction” when the support’s gone?

Second, we’d all do well to remember one thing as black conservatives: we are still black. Some of y’all won’t like that, but walk with me:

Our experience is both uniquely American and uniquely black; it’s always going to be. We can try to focus on the American more, and I believe that we should. But at the end of the day, we are still black men and women in America, with all the positive and negative that comes with.

We can’t forget that, because the people we’re hoping to reach out to, who we want to win over to our side-they haven’t forgotten it…and in too many cases, they’re closer to its reality than many of us are.

Let Michele Bachmann defend herself.