During her speech at the Republican National Convention last week, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said her parents made her believe a little black girl from Jim Crow-era Birmingham could grow up to be president of the United States. That might have been a statement of her ambition.
What she forgot to mention is she is a sellout.
In fact, Rice joins U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio on the list of prominent Uncle Toms shucking and jiving about the so-called great American values of the Republican Party. In exchange for consideration as a presidential candidate in 2016 or 2020, they play the role of token minority GOP celebs. Heck, for her tokenism, Rice snagged one of the first female memberships at the previously all-men's Augusta National Golf Club.
Rice, who served under George W. Bush, is one of those black people who want to be the only African-American partner in a big law firm or on a big corporation's board of directors. These bourgies climb the ladder by never complaining about racist comments in the workplace. Their bosses test them by making some racially insensitive jokes about people in the hood being lazy and depending on government money. If the black employee doesn't get offended, he's an official member of the Whitey Club.
You'll never hear Rice tell the media or her party members that she was offended by the delegate who was kicked out of the convention because she threw peanuts at a black CNN employee and said, "This is how we feed the animals." And you'll never hear Rubio publicly condemn the GOP's anti-immigrant laws in Arizona and Alabama that target Mexicans looking to escape a violent, drug-fueled civil war in their country.
But trotting out tokens won't fool minority voters into casting their ballots for the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Romney has zero support among African-Americans. A USA Today/Gallup poll has Obama leading 66 percent to 25 percent among Hispanic voters. We know the Tea Party is the Ku Klux Klan in disguise.
Follow Luke on Twitter: @unclelukereal1.
