[Opinion] Stacey Dash: The Clueless Black Republican Pawn
Race.
It’s the one thing that has been a constant taboo ever since Barack Obama began his run to become POTUS a half decade ago. Although Barack Obama is our first black president, the idea of him recognizing his color is completely off limits. But for others, race is always recognized and taken into account. Remember Jeremiah Wright, Henry Louis Gates and the simple words he uttered about Trayvon Martin (“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”)? Remember the racial shitstorm those situations caused for Obama? There was nothing inherently racist about anything that Obama did but the response from the right was certainly racist. By recognizing that he would have a son that shared the same color as Trayvon Martin, Obama’s words were called “disgraceful” and “divisive” by Newt Gingrich. He was called out for “race baiting” after saying that police acted “stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis Gates. The right tried to destroy Obama based on his affiliation with Jeremih Wright and was framed as a closet racist.
No matter how much Obama wants to identify with the community, the moment he does so, he’s cited by the media for race baiting. It’s disgusting that African Americans are the only individuals that cannot identify with their race in the mainstream without being branded negatively. But I digress…
In a post-racial, Cosby Syndrome society where the goal for mainstream is to be colorless, identifying race on a mainstream setting is foul play. According to David Sirota’s book “Back To Our Future” the primary reason behind the success of The Cosby Show was that “in 201 episodes, the show did not include a single plot point about the everyday racism that a black family — even a wealthy one — would almost certainly have faced in real life.” Applying that to Obama has seen the same effect. The result has been Obama’s presidency where many “forget” he’s a black man for a moment. But conservatives haven’t forgotten anything. As a matter of fact, race is the trump card that they have been holding for the final stretch of Mitt Romney’s quest to unseat Obama as the President.
All they needed was a catalyst to use Obama’s own community against him and find a new way to identify racism. Because, if the right can prove that the overwhelming majority of African Americans that voted for Obama are now a disgruntled group looking for change, they can perhaps sway a large portion of that 47% Romney identified as feeling “entitled” to government benefits to change their tune. You know, because what Romney said wasn’t racist in the slightest bit.
Campaign ads featuring African Americans against Obama began to surface. Some cleverly pitted African Americans against “illegal” immigrants for taking their jobs and blaming Obama.
Others used black republicans that voted for Obama in 2008 and now had them shift back to the right because they felt Obama didn’t get the job done.
Enter Stacey Dash.
