Hat Tip Booker Rising
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga professor and head of the National Republican African American Caucus, Dr. Howard Hill, responds to RNC chairman Michael Steele's statement calling for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to resign over his comments about President Obama: “If RNC Chair, Michael Steele is truly concerned with racism, then perhaps he needs to first begin within our own party. There are certainly enough issues with race for him to have his hands full in dealing with this right here within the Republican Party. There also are a few within the GOP leadership, he also may wish to ask to step down.”
She continues her statement: "As a 30-year veteran African American Republican and as the head of the National Republican African American Caucus, I find it offensive to see and hear this kind of meaningless rhetoric. It is simply another way of posturing and playing to partisan unrest..... Many of us (African American Republicans) have tried to sit back and look the other way, but when this kind of silly and meaningless rhetoric is espoused with such callousness and lack of sincerity, you can’t be silent. I don’t like having to speak out against my own party or its leadership. But if we do not, this continues, and it makes it appear that all African American Republicans are a part of this foolishness. Because of this, many of us have bowed out of the GOP political mix. It also makes it hard to recruit other African Americans into the Republican Party, at a time when the Party needs to attract us.”
....So Chairman Steele, we invite you to be fervent in the same commitment you have to challenge Democrats, to also call for a change within the GOP; where what you do actually can have an impact in changing the racial climate in America.”
I don't think I could have said it much better myself. This is really serious indictment of Steele's lack of leadership when it comes to doing something effective to grow the GOP's relationship with blacks as a political constituency. While he's busy jumping on the latest political bandwagon in calling for Reid to step down, he is totally silent on Rush's asinine Haiti comments, or any of his other race baiting rhetoric for that matter. The guy is forever opening his mouth to gaffe in one way or another, but he can't seem to wrap his lips around a word or two of pushback when it comes to the party's funky rhetoric and messaging towards blacks, an issue he knows to be real. Now, the Reid flap has become the proverbial straw and even black republicans deep within the party are finding this nonsense hard to stomach.
