MARTIN: But your candidates got to talk to them. One of the criticisms I’ve always had is Republicans — white Republicans — have been scared of black folks.

STEELE: You’re absolutely right. I mean I’ve been in the room and they’ve been scared of me. I’m like, ‘I’m on your side’ and so I can imagine going out there and talking to someone like you, you know, [you're like,] ‘I’ll listen.’ And they’re like ‘Well.’ Let me tell you.

President Obama is overwhelmingly popular in every region of the country except for the south. I am surely this is all entirely due to his economic policies and his radical social agenda and not any other thing at all, certainly not the color of his skin no way sir.

Two great-uncles of syndicated radio host Tom Joyner, sent to the electric chair for the 1913 murder of a Confederate Army veteran, were unanimously pardoned Wednesday by South Carolina.

Officials believe the men are the first in the state to be posthumously pardoned in a capital murder case.

Black landowners Thomas and Meeks Griffin were executed 94 years ago after a jury convicted them of killing 73-year-old John Lewis, a wealthy white veteran living in Blackstock, a Chester County town 40 miles north of Columbia. Two other black men were also put to death for the crime.

‘This won’t bring them back, but this will bring closure. I hope now that they rest in peace,’ Joyner said. ‘This is a good day.’”

Here’s a post from conservative Dan Riehl to confirm that the sentiment wasn’t isolated.

Riding out of DC on the Metro, 9/12, there were some folks from South Dakota and also another Mid-West state I can’t recall in the same Metro car. We were talking, nothing special, really – politics, of course.

In the back were maybe ten or so black kids taking up that section of the car. There was no confrontation, just one or two of them talking loudly enough to make sure they’d be heard.

Without resorting to the poor diction it was along the lines of, these are the people who think Obama is the anti-Christ. That McCain he wasn’t chit. Obama’s going to be president as long as he wants, so these people better get used to it, etc. It went on but not really to a level that was so loud, or so confrontational that it needed to be addressed.

We just ignored them without much trouble at all.

I can’t imagine why black folks might be a little wary of these people.

Plus we know two or more black people are a gang, and regardless of their age, race, or class all of us are thugs.

Seriously, this guy? Right out of the Crips, or Bloods. I never know which is which. I come hardcore, growing up on the mean streets of suburban Silver Spring, MD and the thug life of suburban Lauderdale Lakes, FL.

>> Dan Riehl: Licking his chops (or is it soiling his pants?) for a race war

This suggests to me that, as far as African-Americans are concerned, ‘race politics’ will continue unabated, as if Obama had never been elected president.

This suggests to me that right-wingers insist on pretending as if racism is solved. As if the election of President Obama is just the latest marker they can point to (previous faves were Clarence Thomas and Colin Powell) in order to minimize and delegitimize every other incident of racism.

We’re a long ways from Selma, but that doesn’t mean racists and racism doesn’t still influence our lives in America. And when it does flare up we have to snuff it out immediately and without equivocation. In the process of doing that, it would help a lot to have the aid of conservatives and the conservative movement rather than the casual acceptance of bigotry that is the default position of so much of the right. Try it. It isn’t hard.

I also know that there have been incidents of false reports of racism by police officers — the Tawana Brawley case, for one.

And you know what? Every time a case comes up involving racism and police, we hear about Tawana freaking Brawley from 22 years ago. Yes, she lied. Yes, Al Sharpton is a fool. But every single time, it’s always “remember Tawana Brawley”. That one screwjob of a case is simply not the get out of jail free card for racism that conservatives so often think it is.

Also, the stories about the officer in this case being involved in racial profiling supervision or that he performed resuscitation on a black NFL NBA player don’t have anything to do with what happened the night he went to Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s house. It’s the “some of my best friends are black” argument. No relevance.

Because sometimes you have to laugh about it. (via)

Conservative bloggers and commenters like to insist that I cry racism all the time, and I’m pretty sure that part of that is due to my trademark bluntness (if someone’s being racist, I say so). So be it. They’re wrong on everything else, why stop now?

Boris Kodjoe owns a mansion in Atlanta. But when he goes to answer his door, the black actor knows what it’s like to be an outcast.

‘When I’m opening the door of my own house, someone will ask me where the man of the house is, implying that I’m staff,’ said Kodjoe, best known for starring in Showtime’s ‘Soul Food.’

It’s a feeling some African-Americans say is all too common, even to this day in America: No matter your status or prominence in society, you’re still typecast. That’s why the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s most prominent African-American scholars, has stirred outrage and debate.

Jelani Cobb, an author and professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, says it’s troubling on many levels when ‘one of the most recognizable African-Americans in the country can be arrested in his own home and have to justify being in his own home.’

* The woman introing him indicates she used to campaign for Republicans… until they went “a little nuts”
* She indicates that when things go bad (the GOP)… people go black (Steele)
* Another woman on stage gamely trying to get more than 5 people in the crowd to clap for Steele
* Steele makes a groaner about him being there for the NAACP to keep its tax exempt status

Keep it up guys.

McCain won the South in November, but Obama swept the rest of the country by an even bigger margin. The same pattern holds now for House and Senate seats. Republicans may continue to win governorships in Democratic-leaning states, but in congressional and presidential elections the geographic divides are sizable.

Brownstein reeled off a list of statistics that all arrived at the same place: The South now accounts for a greater share of Republican strength than at virtually any time since the party’s founding. That base is too narrow, as even Republicans know.

Demographically, the forces at work have chipped away at what was once a GOP-leaning majority in the country. The most important is minorities’ rising share of the vote. Whites accounted for 76 percent of the overall electorate last November, down from 85 percent in 1988.

In the last election, there were more than 2 million additional African American voters, about 2 million more Hispanic voters and about a million more Asian American voters. All are groups in which Obama increased the Democratic share of the vote over 2004. Frey estimated that minority voters in nine states made the difference in Obama’s victory margin.

Considering the conservative-wide freakout over Obama’s election and the racially tinged attacks on Judge Sotomayor, the Republicans haven’t learned a thing from the last 10 years. There is always the possibility of Democratic complacency on these issues, and we saw some of that in 2004 when Kerry neglected the black vote until the very end, but somehow I think the current leader of the Democratic party will not make a similar lapse. Call it a hunch based on what he sees in front of the mirror every day.

The Republican party could again become a majority party, but the path for them would have to include being more inclusive to single women, blacks, hispanics, and gays. The issue of course is that strategy is equally likely to turn off large parts of their elderly white male base, as well as the xenophobic white males who are the elected officials on the Republican side.

More of the 3,142 counties in the United States are becoming majority-minority, meaning more than 50 percent of their population is made up of people other than single-race, non-Hispanic whites, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Hey, Byron, what if we made a black vote worth 3/5 of a white one? No?