I have told you all along numerous times in this medium that most black Republicans or black “conservatives” aren’t really either, that their decision to become an apparent Republican or an apparent conservative had a far more personal motive than anything.
Let’s say for example that you are a young black adult, a recent college graduate, perhaps a recent law school graduate, and you’re thinking about a political career. You live in or very near a major urban core. You quickly find out that if you hitch your wagon to the Democrat Party, you are going to have to pay a lot of dues and wait a long time before you could truly be somebody, and there are very good odds that you’ll never really be somebody. The reason is obvious — Where you live, almost all the blacks are Democrats and almost all the Democrats are black. Black skin privilege may have helped you in your academic career, but it’s of no use to you now or in your chosen future. Being a black Democrat in an urban area is like being a stem of hay in a haystack. In other words, nothing special.
Then there is the Republican queue. It’s really short, and because of race pandering lamestream conservatives and neo-cons who live nowhere near the urban core of your city, if you line up in it, you’re bound to become somebody in really short order. The only tradeoff is that you’ll have to fake and feign a little bit of conservative ideology every once in awhile, but you can ace that by memorizing about a half dozen banal bumper sticker catch phrases. If you can parrot those phrases with all the fervor of an AME church pastor, all the better.
However, most people can’t be so fraudulent for so long. Eventually, your true colors are going to shine through. The party which you spurned so long ago because the line was too long will eventually do something like nominate a black man for President. Just like Ponzi schemse eventually fall apart because they’re based on a lie, so too will most black Republicans come out as what they were all along, because their whole careers and reputations were based on a lie or a rationalization.
If cartoon caricatures are enough to make him leave the Republican Party officially, then it is my contention that his attachment to the Republican Party was never all that strong to begin with, or, to put it more accurately, the attachment was based on a self-serving lie or rationalization on the part of Mr. Barnes. Also, since this is in California, and Democrats look like they’ll run everything in the state from here to eternity, he has a personal motivation to ditch the GOP, just as personal was his motivation to embrace it at some point in the past.
Prediction: Ken Barnes isn’t the last. At least one of the black politicians or quasi-politicians you might be able to recognize by name, that the pandering Tea Party Movement leadership are trying to peddle like snowflakes, will similarly show their true colors soon.
A black is a black is a black is a black is a black is a black. Trust very few of them (read: none of them) any further than you can spit.
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