The RaceDoctor Speaks!

To: Michael Steele, Chairman Republican Party
From: The RaceDoctor
Date: February 19, 2009
Re: Let’s Keep it Real, Bruh

I guess the Republican Party was listening. Barely a few weeks after my blog entry about the Republican Party being too white, the GOP done gone an elected you, a black man as chairman of the party. And not just any black man! Brotha Steele, you are so hep, so cool, so “down”, that even though you look like a cuddly balding uncle, you are so mighty conversant in the current generation’s lingo. You labeled the Obama stimulus package “bling bling”; you said that you were going to give the Grand Old Party “hip-hop makeover”; you even promised an “off the hook” public relations offensive to urban/suburban America. Dude, you are so, so dang cool. Forget Bobby Jindal! I think you should deliver the Republican response to Obama’s joint address, and do so by spittin’ some freestyle. That would really be truly fa-shizzle, my nizzle!

I don’t know if you caught my blog entry about the challenge to the Repubs, so I will quickly summarize. The core message is that the disconnect with blacks (and browns too) is not so much about policies, it’s about worldview. Particularly about racism. As long as the Republican party’s knee jerk reaction is to deny the existence of past and present racism as forces that have real consequences – and then to so overemphasize notions of “responsibility” as to obliterate other equally true realties – the party will NEVER gain any significant traction with black folks and other folks with a normal racial consciousness.

Mike, my dawg, a few times in the past – not usually though - I have seen you demonstrate a willingness to inhabit the reality of the bases of historic and contemporary black grievance. Sometimes, I have seen you willing to stand in that space for just long enough to make me believe you are not in complete denial. Now you don’t like staying to linger in anger very long, since you appear to shares the common Republican world view that that many black folks and other left-leaning people like to lounge or even pitch their tents in Camp Greivance and never leave. But if you are trying to foster better dialogue, the best way to get people to move forward is to acknowledge that those grievances are based in reality, not simply a misreading of history driven by folks’ inherent laziness. On occasion in public settings I have seen, you have done that. Your job, son, is to teach your party how to do this.

So yo Mike, listen up. Maybe conducting your lessons to your fellew Repubs in a rap style is the best way make them think you have street cred. But when it’s time to come back to black folks to unveil his transformed party, your best strategy for, as they say, keepin’ it real, my brotha, might be to stick to the standard English that helped you get to where you are. By the way, using standard English seemed to work well enough to get our peeps to fall in line behind the black guy that leads the other party.