Man in the Mirror

Michael Stafford on the GOP's diversity dilemma.

Earlier this year, a tape of NPR's head fundraiser, Ron Schiller, making remarks critical of the GOP and the Tea Party surfaced. In the tape, Schiller referred to the Republican Party as "anti-intellectual" and described the Tea Party as "racist," "Islamophobic," and "xenophobic." He went on to opine that "Jews" control America's major newspapers.

Schiller's bizarre and conspiratorial anti-Semitic remarks are disturbing and offensive. His remarks about the GOP, though, warrant further analysis for a simple reason - they are perceptions widely shared in our society.

Conservatives reacted to Schiller's comments with anger. In their eyes, it was just one more example of a liberal establishment standing ever ready to portray Republicans and conservatives in a negative light.

That reaction was a mistake. In truth, Schiller created an opportunity for discussion and critical self-analysis about racism within the Republican Party. This was an opportunity, not for anger, but for self-examination.

Simply put, it's time for the Party of Lincoln to take a good look in the mirror.

Although conservatives were quick to dismiss Schiller's remarks, there is ample evidence available that would lead reasonable people to such conclusions. One can point to examples such as Sharron Angle's 2010 anti-immigrant campaign television ads, and to more recent comments by Kansas State Representative Virgil Peck suggesting that unauthorized immigrants should be hunted down and shot like feral swine.

And then there are the e-mails. Nationally, Republican staffers and local party officials have made headlines forwarding racist e-mails about President Obama to friends and colleagues. Most recently, the reaction within Republican circles to an offensive cartoon distributed by a local GOP officer and Tea Party activist, Marilyn Davenport, led a prominent African American leader active in the California GOP, Ken Barnes, to leave the Party. Writing in the Sacramento Bee about his decision, Barnes' noted that the cartoon at issue "depicted President Barack Obama and his parents as chimpanzees, while simultaneously implying that the president is not a legitimate American, but rather an African-born interloper." For Barnes' "[h]ad this been an isolated event, it could be set aside as a mere aberration. However, when placed in the context of similar offenses by the same self-identified tea party-conservative Republicans, there emerges a disturbing pattern of extreme intolerance."

How did the Party of Lincoln come to such a pass? I think the answer is simple. For far too long, we have refused to confront, and condemn, the vestiges of political racism that have, over the course of the past 30-40 years, found a new political home within the Republican Party. I'm speaking here primarily of the movement of the segregationist Dixiecrats (and kindred ideological spirits) out of the Democratic Party, and into the GOP- a movement personified, in some ways, by the late Senator Strom Thurmond. This alliance has poisoned the very soul of American conservatism by tying it to belief systems that are reprehensible, and indefensible. It has permitted a dangerous pathology to survive, and today, at a moment of great social stress, despair, and anxiety about the future, to move back towards the political mainstream. It was, and remains, a fundamental betrayal of the founding ideals of the Republican Party.

Someone tell Michele Bachmann!

GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann has signed a conservative pledge called "The Marriage Vow -- A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family." It's not surprising that it's anti-abortion, anti-same sex marriage and anti-divorce. But one particular piece has everyone up in arms over the idea that she and other signatories think that black people were better off during slavery:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

Do Bachmann and others who signed the pledge actually think we were better off without freedom and with all of the other emotional and physical horrors that accompanied being enslaved? We don't know, quite honestly doubt they care, and don't believe that's actually the point (and the very accuracy of the statement -- including whether living arrangements during slavery are what we'd consider "two-parent households" -- is a whole different conversation).

What's actually disturbing here is the total willingness to invoke slavery -- as well as the current state of the black family -- to serve as a cheap emotional hook to promote a conservative agenda that has nothing more to do with African Americans than it does with anyone else (not unlike the infamous "The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb" billboards).

Sometimes I think the GOP is a lost cause...