After prominent minority Republicans like Condoleeza Rice, Govs. Susana Martinez (NM), Nikki Haley (SC), and Brian Sandoval (NV), Rep. Tim Scott (SC), and Mia Love, who is running for Congress from Utah, addressed the Republican National Convention last, mainstream media outlets like The Washington Post were intent on diminishing and dismissing the GOP’s diversity.
President Barack Obama cannot win reelection if minorities do not turn out for him with at least the same enthusiasm as they did in 2008, and Democrats, as a party, will be in trouble if minorities start becoming Republicans.
Aware of this, the mainstream media wants to delegitimize Republican minorities and, as best as they can in the new media age, present Republicans as the “whites only” party.
Take Washington Post columnist Colbert King, who reduced black Republicans like a Rice, a scholar and former Secretary of State and national security adviser, as tokens and mere “entertainment” for a white audience.
King said Republicans “always have African-Americans on the podium.”
“Either it’s somebody singing ‘God Bless America,’ or praying, you know, before or after,” King said. “The entertainment value’s always there for us.”
King also said “it doesn’t matter what faces they put up on the screen during the convention,” Republicans “on the ground are very, very anti-immigration, which is really anti-Hispanic.”
These remarks were similar to Los Angeles, CA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s in which he said Republicans could not just “trot out a brown face.”
And “The Root,” which is owned by the Washington Post, Raynard Jackson, was more than happy to allow a black Republican consultant to pen a column expressing his displeasure at the lack of diversity at the RNC.
“The Root” describes itself as “the leading online source of national and international news and commentary from an African-American perspective,” and President Barack Obama has met with the publication’s reporters at the White House.
And “The Root” was more than happy to run Jackson’s column even though the last RNC chairman, Michael Steele, was black.
Jackson’s column serves to help the publication gin up support for Obama among blacks by painting the GOP as a party that does not welcome minorities.
Jackson wrote the “least-diverse time in America is during a period every four years at the end of the summer: the Republican National Convention.”
He said after the RNC he knows “America would look like if all blacks and other people of color mysteriously disappeared” but then seems to admit that he was greeted warmly.
“I have not been showered with this much attention since I was a little baby!,” Jackson wrote.
After lamenting about his belief that there is a lack of black Republicans in the so-called pipeline (he did not note the last RNC chairman, Michael Steele, was black) — in high-level staff positions with the Republican party structure — Jackson wrote he feels Republican party leaders do not even ask black Republicans for advice on policy and personnel matters.
Jackson wrote that “the majority of blacks will vote for Obama” because “Republicans have not given African Americans a reason to vote for Republicans or Romney.”
“I am embarrassed at the lack of diversity at this convention,” Jackson wrote. “The sad thing is that many of the party leaders agree with me in private conversations, but over the years, they have done absolutely nothing to address this issue.”
Neither Jackson nor King acknowledged the lack of prominent minority Democrats in high-profile offices. Democrats do not have a Hispanic governor and only have one Hispanic senator (Bob Menendez) and black governor (Deval Patrick), both of whom are not referred to as tokens.
Further, nearly every minority Democrat comes from a majority-minority district, which means white liberal Democrats have not been voting for and electing minority Democrats. The media, though, never implies that these liberal white Democrats are prejudiced.
Instead, the mainstream media promotes stories that advance the notion that Republicans are not inclusive, when similar stories could be written about Democrats. Or they just ignore the GOP’s diversity.
Last week, for instance, ABC aired less than two minutes of Rice’s speech. Mainstream media networks talked over Martinez’s speech. And NBC and CNN continually cut away when minorities like Ted Cruz or Haley were speaking, essentially editing their convention coverage to make the GOP seem less diverse than it is.
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