The Elephant in the Room (Black Republicans)

                                           
                                            Confessions of a Conservative

   
Three years ago, I was asked by a graduating senior from Florida A&M University's School of Journalism and Graphic Design to participate in a documentary featuring what can best be described as a UFO sighting in the South-a black Republican.  I was intrigued to see how this query would unfold as the enthusiastic and talented journalism students set up their equipment to begin recording the ideations of a black man who had pledged allegiance to a party that had for all intents and purposes-this was well before the jingoistic nationalism that followed Trump-had become the bane of society in the minds of many in the black community.

I was not given any prompts and had no real template to follow other than responding to prepared questions that purportedly would shed light on "turncoats" like me.  The filming was done in a beautiful, downtown park with wonderful vistas of the city.  Unfortunately, our start time was at the precipice of the cool morning air being usurped by the toasty, early afternoon sun that seemed to raise the ambient temperature at least 10-15 degrees.  "All of my life I had to fight"....oops, wrong monologue.  I am the progeny of a college professor and a student of the Bible.  Education, or the intrinsic desire to teach, inform, enlighten has been modeled to me for as long as I can remember. Perris began his question with what felt like a genuine desire to dig beneath the acrimonious veneer ascribed to so many who dared to be identified as conservative and have melanin in their skin.

To give context to my position, I gleaned from the history of the two parties and their duplicitous relationship with the descendants of the Diaspora.  If you actually get a chance to watch the video, I was pleasantly surprised that most of the content is derived from the historical and current information I shared with the journalist in training.  I could see that they were intrigued at the fact that I could talk in detail about not just the history of the Republican party, but articulate why the mass exodus of blacks from a party that assiduously advocated for the right of former slaves to fully engage in the inalienable rights of the venerated Republic.  The political climate today, in the Age of Trump, has denigrated black conservatives to the level of social pariahs or caricatures.  It becomes exhausting trying to extrapolate the difference between being a member of the GOP and supporting the caustic, demagoguery of a political dilettante.

There is a distinct ideological dichotomy between sycophants that blindly support the petulant, digital sophistry of a movement that usurped the party of Lincoln.  I am not a party-at-all-cost type of dude.  I was very verbal about my distaste for the way so-called Conservatives tolerated, condoned, engendered the toxic, nationalistic banter that led to the ascension of this President. He is the antithesis of Barack Obama.  For some, that is all that was needed, independent of the uber-liberal agenda he promulgated.  I am still conservative, just don't for a hot second believe that the putrid ideations attached to this iteration of the Republican party represent me!