As you know, I've been featuring quotes from Black conservatives as this is Black History Month. That there are plenty of great Black conservatives with great quotes to cover a full month comes as no surprise to conservatives, though it might to many liberals who like to portray the Republican Party - and conservatives in general - as a bunch of old, angry, racist white men.
Yesterday I featured Professor Walter E. Williams, one of my favorites when it comes to economics. So I thought I'd share this with you:
Great job @maggie82. Thank you! is.gd/t2I3m2
— Walter E. Williams (@WE_Williams) February 27, 2013
But that wasn't all. Apparently this post attracted the attention of The Heritage Foundation who sent out this tweet:
Bloggers we love: @maggie82 at Thurber's Thoughts! Check it out: bit.ly/5MRU
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) February 27, 2013
That prompted this tweet from fellow blogger and one of the main organizers of BlogBash, Ali Akbar:
A couple of my fav orgs that get the whole blogger love concept: @afphq @heritage @breitbartnews @gridironcomms @actengage ... and many more
— Ali A. Akbar (@ali) February 27, 2013
Indeed, it's true. Bloggers live for links and mentions, as it drives more people to the blog site and results in more Twitter followers.
But it's not just for the recognition - it's for the collaboration. The more people sharing the news and conservative perspectives, the better. It's a 'force multiplier' and it helps the conservative side reach people they previously hadn't.
So thank you to Professor Williams for taking the time to say thanks, though - like me - I'm sure he was raised to exhibit proper manners, and thank you to Heritage for the great people you have on staff and for understanding the blogging world and working with us rather than in competition.
To close out Black History Month, I have a post by DarkKnight3565, a regular blogger on African American Conservatives. In talking about conservatives, progressives and 'Uncle Tom,' he writes something that really struck me - and I couldn't help but wonder why it isn't said more often.
In fact, I wonder why we don't reach out more to such individuals whenever we need people to address charges of racism from the main stream media. There are plenty of conservatives with many different hues of skin color. Unlike on the liberal side, we don't look to them for that varying shade of skin, but for their conservative principles, truly seeing the content of their character.
Black conservatives have a special challenge. They're criticized as much as the rest of us for their principles. But they're also criticized because they are Black, a discrimination I thought we'd ended.
DarkKnight3565 helps us to understand this, which is why I want to end my month of quotes with this excerpt from him.
Even Drs. Thomas Sowell and Walt Williams, African-Americans who escaped poverty to become two of the most respected economic thinkers alive today, were called “a new breed of Uncle Tom [and] some of the biggest liars the world ever saw” by Benjamin Hooks, former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. If that’s considered advancing colored people…
If someone of Dr. Sowell’s accomplishments can be called an Uncle Tom, then what is an Uncle Tom? Clearly Mr. Hooks did not mean the term to refer to the actual Uncle Tom from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, who sacrificed himself to a death by beating at the hands of a slave master rather than betray two escaped slaves, as Dr. Turner did. The term as Mr. Hooks and others use it, is, according to dictionary.com, a “disparaging and offensive” term for “a Black man considered by other Blacks to be subservient to curry favor with Whites.”
Generally, this definition comes as much from White Liberal Elite as it does from Blacks. In fact, often the White Liberal Elite seems to be leading Blacks by the hand on issues of race, defining for us what is racist and who are the Uncle Toms, and often using Blacks to promote Progressivism, regardless of the ill effect this Progressivism may have on the Black community. This is generally true today as it has been true historically. Margaret Sanger for example, founder of Planned Parenthood, once said that “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
...
One can hardly fault those African-Americans who tend to have to knee-jerk association of Conservatism and racism, and therefore Black Conservatism and Uncle Tom-ism. Much of that is the result of the White Liberal Elite dominance of the media, and their willingness to exploit this dominance in order to fashion a narrative to make Conservatives seem racist. The typical mainstream media reporter will search for a racist on the Right with the same desperation with which I search for the free sample tables at Costco. And if one cannot be found, then one can be created, by way of either planting one at, say, a Tea Party rally (how difficult is it to have some guy stand with a placard of Obama with a bone through his nose?), or by labeling some Conservative as a racist.
...
With over-the-top, hyper-partisan rhetoric such as this taken as gospel by many, is it any wonder then that Black Conservatives are seen as betrayers of their race?
I hope you'll read the entire article, as it tells the story that all conservatives should tell: we have an excellent record when it comes to supporting civil rights, individual rights, property rights and policies that allow every individual to achieve the American Dream - and, most importantly, those conservative principles benefit everyone, minorities most of all.
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