I’ve been grossly amused by the two Sunday opinion pieces in The Miami Herald written by Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association, and John Rowe of Lewisburg, Pa.
These two people were attempting to defend hate-filled comments by wealthy Republican radio host Rush Limbaugh, former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo and South Carolina GOP activist Rusty DePass.
Rush said he wanted President Barack Obama to fail. He played a “Barack the Magic Negro” CD on his radio show for 14.75 million listeners.
Tancredo called everyone a racist, most notably Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonya Sotomayor, simply because she belonged to Hispanic organizations. She is Hispanic.
DePass likened First Lady Michelle Obama to an escaped gorilla. Commenting on a report posted on Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., DePass wrote,
“I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors-probably harmless.”
How do you defend such racial bigotry? Rice and Rowe gave us a history lesson dating back to the 1860s.
President Lincoln was a Republican, and he freed the slaves. None of this, of course, is relevant today. This is the year 2009. People vote according to their issues, such as healthcare, jobs, education, national defense, human rights and, yes, racism.
Both Rice and Rowe are out of touch, just like the Republican Party. Leonard Pitts Jr. has it right when he says in his column that the GOP has a serious race problem. He’s right for these reasons: Ninety-six percent of blacks, 67 percent of Hispanics and 63 percent of Asians voted for Democratic President Barack Obama.
There are no black Republican congressmen or congresswomen out of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. There are 43 black Democratic members of Congress.
There is only one black U.S. senator, who is a Democrat, and there are a whopping two Hispanic senators, one of whom is a Democrat and one is a Republican.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has 24 members in the House of Representatives who are all Democrats. There are three Hispanic Republican Congressmen and Congresswomen.
Coincidentally, the four Hispanic Republican politicians in the House and Senate are all Cuban. What does that tell you?
Therefore, Republicans currently have a race problem. You certainly don’t need Leonard to tell you that. Look at today’s statistics and not how Republican Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in the 1860s.
John Dudley is a Miami Beach resident.
MrInvestor2u2002@Yahoo.com
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