The Republican Party is Really White Roundup

Watching the Republican convention this week, I couldn’t help but think in Wolf Blitzer-like racial generalizations: the crowd was so white, and so old. Every single time a reporter nabbed a non-white person to interview, I was impressed. Wow, they found one. I wondered if the few black and Hispanic people in the crowd felt extra pressure to primp before the speeches. The cameras would undoubtedly be scanning the crowd for a variety of different faces. If yours didn’t look like everyone else’s, you’d probably be on cable!

My realization was not a very deep one. There’s been an interesting smattering of information on the state of young Republicania in the press recently.

• Yesterday, the Washington Post published a bang-up article on the subject. But, it took many a paragraph to reach this revelation: “the number of black Republican delegates declined from a record 167 in 2004 to this year’s 36.”
• Esquire magazine’s most recent issue features a story on young republicans gathering for a leadership conference in D.C. Toward the end of the piece there is a selection of head shots and quotes from various attendees. And what do you know? One of the few non-white faces in the crowd is none other than Marcus Skelton, former at-large D.C. council member candidate. As long as you’re on the website, check out this article too.
• A piece in The Root on the state of black conservatives takes a while to get to its main point. So here it is: “Until the Republican Party is ready to renounce the politics of division—opening the door to the lives and views of people whose histories and ethnicities don’t mesh with the traditions of modern Republicanism—the GOP brand will remain damaged goods in much of black America, damaged by the brand managers themselves.”

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