Black Conservatives Liberals Love to Hate

Black conservatives find themselves in a difficult position, as their beliefs and actions often pit them against other blacks.

Fox News contributor Juan Williams, who does not identify as a conservative but will defend them (like his son, RNC Deputy Press Secretary Raffi Williams) when he feels it's necessary, wrote in March that "Black Americans must be obedient liberals on all things or risk being called a race traitor or an Uncle Tom." It's not quite that simple.

Blacks who lean to the right politically are free to do so, it's just puzzling because it's quite clear that the right isn't very concerned with the African-American community's interests, and hasn't been for some time. Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele admitted that the GOP hadn't given blacks any reason to support them in the past, and what has the party done to change that?

Furthermore, attempts by some black leaders to align themselves with conservatives have resulted in failure. For example, New York State Senator Malcolm Smith tried to hop on the GOP bandwagon for career advancement and fell flat on his face.

The following are a number of prominent blacks who draw the ire of liberals. This is not an attack as much as it is simply voicing the issues that people have with them. They should all be used to that by now—it's politics as usual.

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Occupation: Fox News contributor; former Congressman; retired Army Lt. Col.
Why they're hated: Pompous fire and brimstone
Signature quote: "In Obama's case we've enabled affirmative action to find a home in the nation's highest office."

There's always that one person in the barbershop with the loudest, most outrageous opinions. Allen West is that guy, and politics is his barbershop. The former colonel and Congressman has a distinct way of going from zero to 100 in the blink of an eye, as if someone pressed an "Allen West button" to trigger an overreaction.

That's why he snaps on colleagues via email for challenging his Medicare position, launches anti-Obama tirades, and sounds off on black liberals. His book, Guardian of the Republic: An American Ronin's Journey to Faith, Family and Freedom, is the black conservative's "Hit Em Up," only the punches don't land:

Right. West is the Guardian of the Republic, the loud guard dog who attacks when unprovoked. Then again, he was a Florida Congressman, so it makes too much sense.

Occupation: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S.
Why they're hated: Hypocrisy
Signature quote: "People get bent out of shape about the fact that when I was a kid, you could not drink out of certain water fountains. Well, the water was the same."

Clarence Thomas is the successor to Thurgood Marshall as the second black Supreme Court justice. Sadly, that's not his claim to fame—or, rather, infamy.

First, there was the sexual harassment drama with attorney Anita Hill that surrounded his nomination to the Supreme Court in 1991, which was especially ugly considering Thomas was the chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), i.e. the very agency responsible for preventing that type of behavior. During the surrounding circus, Thomas even sang the "y'all are trying to keep the black man down" song until he was finally, and narrowly, confirmed.

But what really gets under people's skin are Thomas' views on affirmative action. As a longstanding opponent, he compared it to slavery when citing the University of Texas at Austin's admissions policy. He also alleges that Yale Law School's affirmative action policy reduced the value of his law degree to a mere "15 cents." This, coming from a man who got from Pin Point, Ga. to Yale Law as a result of affirmative action.

It's as contradictory as a man who, as CNN pointed out, once "warned people that a revolution was coming and memorized the speeches of Malcolm X," in addition to believing "the whole of American culture was irretrievably tainted by racism" following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, supported the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

To this day, Thomas remains arguably the most conservative chair on the Supreme Court, making the title of "the anti-Thurgood Marshall" a deserved crown of thorns.

Occupation: MSNBC analyst; former RNC chairman
Why they're hated: Lack of self-awareness
Signature quote: "We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings."

Michael Steele had a dream. He envisioned re-branding the Republican party as something fresh and new that young minority voters could dig into. "We need messengers to really capture that region—young, Hispanic, black, a cross section," he told the Washington Times after being named the RNC's new chairman in early 2009. Oy.

Steele failed to elaborate on how, exactly, the Republican party was going to lure these apprehensive young minorities to its home like the child-eating witch from Hansel and Gretel. He also apparently didn't consider that maybe, just maybe, the GOP was about as interested in a hip-hop overhaul as it was in actually attracting these voters to the party.

Steele has admitted that Republicans have given blacks no reason to support them, but has tried to shoot down Democrats for saying the same thing in the past. Furthermore, despite claiming to avoid throwing the race card, he's also acknowledged that his race places him on thin ice with Republicans. Pick a story and stick to it.

Five years later, Steele is no longer the RNC's chairman and blacks still have no reason to vote Republican. (The fried chicken and collard greens didn't work, eh?)

Occupation: Actress; Fox News correspondent
Why they're hated: She's still clueless
Signature quote: "I didn't know anything about [Obama] when I voted for him in 2008. My choice to do so was purely because he was black."

Age-defying beauty Stacey Dash was solidified as a goddess during the '90s following her appearance in the generational landmark, Clueless. However, fans went from puzzled to downright disgusted when she proudly revealed herself to be a Mitt Romney supporter during the 2012 presidential election.

She's free to vote for whoever she wants to, but the justification for why she switched sides simply exposes her ignorance. Largely unaware of President Obama prior to the 2008 presidential election, she admits to only voting for him "because [he] was black," yet blames him for ruining the country when he essentially inherited the 2008 Detroit Lions.

Take, for example, her issue with the Obama administration's decision to challenge Louisiana's school voucher system. "The school system has become a part of this huge government machine, governed by people who aren't close to the situation," Dash told Fox News. "That's why I'm a Republican. I believe in small government ...The government is just too big and we have to make it smaller, people are getting lost."

Sadly, the more Stacey Dash talks, the less attractive she becomes. Being black and female, does she really think her voice matters to the GOP? Regardless, she's right at home with Fox News, remaining clueless nearly 20 years later.

Occupation: Poet; cultural critic
Why they're hated: Narrow-minded trolling
Signature quote: "As long as the amoral moguls of pop, both black and white, project anti-social behavior as a form of liberated vitality, we'll see energetic but spiritually debilitating confusion in our young, who seek, as usual, to define themselves apart from their parents and adult authority."

The fact that people like Stanley Crouch are given a platform to share their thoughts is as much of an issue as those very thoughts. Crouch has used his New York Daily News column to basically call Alex Haley a fraud and Al Sharpton a race-baiter, while being especially critical of the hip-hop community. Crouch, refuses to accept that the genre is anything more than aggressive noise. He's gone as far as to call Snoop Dogg an "unrepentant thug and pimp" while criticizing him for things he said 20 years ago.

He referred to 2Pac as a "thug minstrel" two days before his death, and he has a penchant for combing through material to extract negatives while conveniently turning a blind eye to any positives. How does that make him any different than Bill O'Reilly?

As Russell Simmons put it, Crouch is "overly content with defending the status quo." All blacks need to fit his rigid definition of what's "proper," and, because he struggles to process anything outside of that, he attacks it. Everything isn't always black, white, or easy to define, but this is the same guy who once devoted an entire piece to why the specifics of President Obama's ethnic background don't make him "one of us."

Occupation: Economist; academic; author and columnist
Why they're hated: Denial, oversimplification of race in America and possible self-plagiarism
Signature quote: "Today I doubt you could find any significant problem that blacks face that is caused by racial discrimination."

As an economist, Williams takes pride in being practical. However, his attempts to simplify complex matters always miss the mark. There are his views on minimum wage and affirmative action which, in his eyes, hurt African-Americans more than racism and discrimination. Beyond that, he feels that too much emphasis has been placed on slavery and racism as they pertain to the current struggles of the black community.

As an opponent of anti-discrimination programs, you can probably predict what his response to Ta-Nehisi Coates' reparations argument was. In a weak response, Williams said "I think the call for slavery reparations is simply another hustle." Coates, convinced Williams didn't even read his piece, proceeded to shred him:

Recycling arguments is like recycling verses, only you look even worse.

Occupation: Author
Why they're hated: Elitist obliviousness
Signature quote: "Blacks live in a bubble because nobody ever tells us the truth. No one says, 'You're making too many excuses. Your kids can do better and ought to do better than they do now, and you ought to be more responsible about that.'"

As a writer, Shelby Steele understands the power of words. That's why his assessment of what blacks need to do in order to better themselves comes off so ridiculous, though that's likely his aim.

His writing echoes an absurd belief that blacks need only look at the people in the mirror to solve all of their problems, because the African-American community suffers from victim syndrome. In 2006, he basically told the San Francisco Chronicle the only reason he's so unpopular is because he's keeping it real: "The only politically correct way to see blacks is as victims of larger forces that are constantly determining them and beating them and miring them in difficulty."

His denial of systemic racism and notion that the playing field is level for everyone is especially baffling considering where he was born: Chicago. He should to read Ta-Nehisi Coates' reparations piece and take a closer look at what's going on in his hometown.

The reality is it's Steele who lives in a bubble, one where black oppression ended in the 1960s, where finger-pointing blacks exploit white guilt, and people like him who live with their blinders on get to play the role of accountability police. A man of his age and intellect should know better, so perhaps he should look in the mirror and police himself.

Occupation: Business executive; radio host; columnist; former presidential hopeful
Why they're hated: Brash political grandstanding
Signature quote: "Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks—if you don't have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!"

Herman Cain, or the "Herminator," is the man who rose from humble beginnings in Atlanta to one day head the National Restaurant Association and throw his hat in the ring for the Republican presidential nomination for the 2000 and 2012 presidential elections. He's brazen (bold enough to publicly call out Bill Clinton over his 1993 health care plan), but that same willingness to say anything is why he suffers from the dreaded foot-in-mouth disease.

His past assertions that blacks have been brainwashed into thinking conservatism is their enemy, racism is no longer an issue in America and the poor have only themselves to blame for being poor are all ridiculous. The thing is, Cain knows that. The main is no fool, he just figured he could troll his way to the GOP's presidential nod. However, what Cain neglected to acknowledge is that those type of comments are exactly what widens the divide between black conservatives and the rest of the black community.

The thing about trolling is that when you get caught slipping for any reason, people can't wait to ether you. That's why those sexual harrassment allegations all but sank his chances at that nomination.

Occupation: Professor; author; former U.S. Secretary of State
Why they're hated: Her work with the Bush administration
Signature quote: "I've always said about Birmingham that because race was everything, race was nothing."

Rice deserves credit for becoming the first female African-American secretary of state. However, due to that role and her previous position as the National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush, she's always been under the microscope and the gun.

Her position within Bush's administration placed her at a distance, and, often, at odds with the African-American community. That involves the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, and her defense of how the then-president handled the tragedy. The fact that she was in New York City shopping at the Ferragamo store as news about the devastation broke didn't help either.

Rice is also a product of Jim Crow-era Birmingham, Ala. Her friend, Denise McNair, was one of the four little girls killed when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in 1963. So her willingness to support decisions that are out-of-step with the needs and priorities of the African-American community are even more baffling.

Occupation: CNN anchor
Why they're hated: Makes absurd attempts to "save" the black community
Signature quote: "Clearly Justin Bieber, a young man who, by the way, has immersed himself in black hip-hop culture, should not be saying the n-word. So the question is, if you want people like Justin Bieber to stop using it and to stop making excuses for using it, shouldn't you do the same?"

Just hearing the name "Don Lemon" incites eye-rolls. This is largely because Lemon believes there are "obvious" solutions to the black community's ills, which usually involve doing whatever Lemon says.

If you let Lemon—every "I'm not racist" person's lone black friend—tell it, the issues plaguing the black community are cultural, not economic, as if one doesn't fuel the other. People might be inclined to pull their pants up and stop littering if the message isn't coming from someone standing on a soapbox that reads "AGENDA" to feel tall.

Then, of course, there was his recent attempt to pin Justin Bieber's use of the n-word on blacks. Yes, it's our fault that Bieber, who, at 14, should know right from wrong, made those jokes. As Gawker's Jason Parham points out, Lemon "shifts the moral burden of racism" back onto blacks, believing problems can be solved by simply flipping a switch. That's why his proposed remedy to "hood disease" is to "get out of the hood."

Don Lemon is not black America's mouth piece. He speaks for himself and for his own personal gain. Lemon says he's tired of talking about race. That's fine—the world is tired of listening to him.