The Four Types Of Black Conservatives
ivoexplains.com
The Four Types Of Black Conservatives
13-17 minutes
As one who used to identify as a Black Republican, I am often asked by confused voters of all races how Black Americans can be politically conservative at all. In America’s current political climate, with fascism on full display, after the nation barely survived a Trump presidency with our democratic republic in tact, how can they do it? How can some Black voters claim political conservatism, much less have the nerve to vote strictly Republican?
These are valid questions.
After the murder of Trayvon Martin and the very public support of Zimmerman from right-wing racists, a number of us broke ranks and didn’t look back. We were already tolerating bigots on the right for the sake of exercising our political idealism, but to watch Republicans erupt with flagrant and abject hatred for Black people and it go unchecked the way that it did was a final straw.
For some of us.
But that political ideology has remained an anchor for many Black voters, politicians, and pundits, and those most celebrated in the media appear to be very comfortable and content in this hostile political environment. The loudest and proudest “Black conservatives” tend to agree with anti-Black sentiments put forth by the most heinous, far leaning right-wing factions. Public figures like Larry Elder and Candace Owens have become the prevailing images of Black conservatism in America, and it’s deeply unsettling to most people watching.
My Own Political Journey
I realized years ago, even after parting ways with party affiliation, that I couldn’t even continue calling myself a “Black conservative”; the moniker invokes too many images of self-hating white apologists. Even people who claimed to know and understand who I am as a person struggled to understand my political ideology because the phraseology “Black conservative” was too blinding to leave room for my individuality or any other intellectual possibility.
It’s been extremely frustrating for me.
However, throughout my political process I have experienced and observed a trajectory of Black conservative thought on which certain inspired citizens interpret their options for personal (and sometimes corporate) empowerment within American society. Black Americans who at any time embrace conservatism or the Republican platform tend to have one thing in common –
A positive concept of their individual relationship to capitalism.
Black people who feel particularly capable or are privileged in any way tend to take hold of conservative ideology, if for no other reason, because they believe themselves to have something to conserve. The problem, however, is that American society, economy, and culture have all worked historically to disempower Black people, using systems that still threaten Black lives and livelihoods, with those pushing hardest to maintain the imbalance also being conservative.
It seems to be a contradiction.
How Black Conservatism Is Possible
To make sense of it all, one must first understand that Black conservatives tend to focus on conserving traditional values where white conservatives tend to use that same language, yet only work to conserve traditional institutions and their entrenched social norms. As a racialized nation, white Americans are generally more empowered than others, and thereby exercise a level of agency in their personal and community politics that most Black Americans are still largely unfamiliar with. Having been socially branded as a permanent underclass through chattel slavery, Black Americans tend to use politics and the political system in a different way than other groups, especially white Americans, who were once direct oppressors and have always been civic opponents.
So there is also a tendency to process political ideology differently between races, based on cultural and economic experience. If you are more hopeful about your place in America’s capitalist system, it is easier to agree with conservative ideology.
If you can understand that much but still need answers on how Black conservatives deal with the white supremacist ideologies put forth by Republican politicians and right-wing pundits, you’re not alone. The answers, however, require time and experience that most of you with questions will never have. So I submit to you today the Four Types Of Black Conservatives, as I have observed and experienced myself to varying degrees, that you might understand that all Blacks who say they are conservative are not crazy people who agree that white supremacy and assimilation to hyperrational, hypercapitalist groupthink.
Not all.
What differentiates the mindsets of Black Americans who consider themselves conservative is their belief about their relationship to the Black community. While we may all share a positive outlook on how we maneuver through America’s economic systems, our place in the social landscape and how we interpret ourselves with respect to said social standing is where we become highly distinctive.
Anti-Blackness is not a mark of conservative thought; political conservatism is too vast and global in nature for the expressions of the current mainstream American right to represent an entire category of ideas.
Such is intellectually lazy.
However, anti-Blackness is very much a part of the psyche of many Americans, and many of them are Black. Therefore, that self-hatred will present itself in the politics of those who wish to remedy their circumstance by purging all signs of Blackness from their lives. Political conservatism is larger than today’s pundits, and the scope of Black conservative thought is actually more broad than you might think.
I hope that the primer below will provide some insights into how conservative thought can be interpreted and will inspire some grace on the part of the reader in listening to those who identify as Black conservatives before passing judgment on what they “must” think; you may very well be mistaken.
But then again, you may be right on target. It seriously depends. Judge each situation accordingly.
Black conservatives come in a small variety of flavors, and they are very distinctive:
1) The ‘Pick Me’ Black conservative is usually an individual who felt deeply alienated from Black culture predating the 2000s and finds a sense of identity in cultural contrarianism, pointing the finger in judgement at those who once rejected or shamed them socially.
This individual is usually a cultural blank slate, not having a strong grasp on American history outside of the Eurocentric slant presented in US school systems. More often than not, Black conservatives in this group grew up in predominantly white communities and feel insecure about their inability to relate to the historical “Black experience” but also feel grateful that they were able to bypass “the struggle”. Utilizing the poorest of all logic for causation, these Black conservatives conclude that the problem is the culture and that simply exchanging Black culture for ‘the culture of success’ (read: white adjacency) would solve all our problems.
2) The ‘Old School’ Black conservative was raised on WWII culture and discipline, is the poster child of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps”, is absolutely willing to blame the victim because hard nosed self-shaming is all they know.
These Black conservatives are often political pundits and on-air celebrities, parroting the Republican platform and engaging audiences with the discussions of “family values”, religious freedom, and historic American conservatism. Their ideology was formed at the height of white supremacist economic propaganda, during the early 20th Century, when Black Americans largely believed that the hope of industry and freedom belonged to them also if they worked hard and followed ‘the rules’.
Because of their simplistic beliefs about causality, these Black conservatives tend to hold hard and fast beliefs about what Black people “need to do” as if simply changing their behavior will change how they are perceived and therefore the results they get from others, including racist whites.
These individuals tend to be very much tied to their image and how they are perceived by those in power, with a penchant for unquestioned assimilation in the name of capitalist realism.
ivoexplains.com
The Four Types Of Black Conservatives
13-17 minutes
As one who used to identify as a Black Republican, I am often asked by confused voters of all races how Black Americans can be politically conservative at all. In America’s current political climate, with fascism on full display, after the nation barely survived a Trump presidency with our democratic republic in tact, how can they do it? How can some Black voters claim political conservatism, much less have the nerve to vote strictly Republican?
These are valid questions.
After the murder of Trayvon Martin and the very public support of Zimmerman from right-wing racists, a number of us broke ranks and didn’t look back. We were already tolerating bigots on the right for the sake of exercising our political idealism, but to watch Republicans erupt with flagrant and abject hatred for Black people and it go unchecked the way that it did was a final straw.
For some of us.
But that political ideology has remained an anchor for many Black voters, politicians, and pundits, and those most celebrated in the media appear to be very comfortable and content in this hostile political environment. The loudest and proudest “Black conservatives” tend to agree with anti-Black sentiments put forth by the most heinous, far leaning right-wing factions. Public figures like Larry Elder and Candace Owens have become the prevailing images of Black conservatism in America, and it’s deeply unsettling to most people watching.
My Own Political Journey
I realized years ago, even after parting ways with party affiliation, that I couldn’t even continue calling myself a “Black conservative”; the moniker invokes too many images of self-hating white apologists. Even people who claimed to know and understand who I am as a person struggled to understand my political ideology because the phraseology “Black conservative” was too blinding to leave room for my individuality or any other intellectual possibility.
It’s been extremely frustrating for me.
However, throughout my political process I have experienced and observed a trajectory of Black conservative thought on which certain inspired citizens interpret their options for personal (and sometimes corporate) empowerment within American society. Black Americans who at any time embrace conservatism or the Republican platform tend to have one thing in common –
A positive concept of their individual relationship to capitalism.
Black people who feel particularly capable or are privileged in any way tend to take hold of conservative ideology, if for no other reason, because they believe themselves to have something to conserve. The problem, however, is that American society, economy, and culture have all worked historically to disempower Black people, using systems that still threaten Black lives and livelihoods, with those pushing hardest to maintain the imbalance also being conservative.
It seems to be a contradiction.
How Black Conservatism Is Possible
To make sense of it all, one must first understand that Black conservatives tend to focus on conserving traditional values where white conservatives tend to use that same language, yet only work to conserve traditional institutions and their entrenched social norms. As a racialized nation, white Americans are generally more empowered than others, and thereby exercise a level of agency in their personal and community politics that most Black Americans are still largely unfamiliar with. Having been socially branded as a permanent underclass through chattel slavery, Black Americans tend to use politics and the political system in a different way than other groups, especially white Americans, who were once direct oppressors and have always been civic opponents.
So there is also a tendency to process political ideology differently between races, based on cultural and economic experience. If you are more hopeful about your place in America’s capitalist system, it is easier to agree with conservative ideology.
If you can understand that much but still need answers on how Black conservatives deal with the white supremacist ideologies put forth by Republican politicians and right-wing pundits, you’re not alone. The answers, however, require time and experience that most of you with questions will never have. So I submit to you today the Four Types Of Black Conservatives, as I have observed and experienced myself to varying degrees, that you might understand that all Blacks who say they are conservative are not crazy people who agree that white supremacy and assimilation to hyperrational, hypercapitalist groupthink.
Not all.
What differentiates the mindsets of Black Americans who consider themselves conservative is their belief about their relationship to the Black community. While we may all share a positive outlook on how we maneuver through America’s economic systems, our place in the social landscape and how we interpret ourselves with respect to said social standing is where we become highly distinctive.
Anti-Blackness is not a mark of conservative thought; political conservatism is too vast and global in nature for the expressions of the current mainstream American right to represent an entire category of ideas.
Such is intellectually lazy.
However, anti-Blackness is very much a part of the psyche of many Americans, and many of them are Black. Therefore, that self-hatred will present itself in the politics of those who wish to remedy their circumstance by purging all signs of Blackness from their lives. Political conservatism is larger than today’s pundits, and the scope of Black conservative thought is actually more broad than you might think.
I hope that the primer below will provide some insights into how conservative thought can be interpreted and will inspire some grace on the part of the reader in listening to those who identify as Black conservatives before passing judgment on what they “must” think; you may very well be mistaken.
But then again, you may be right on target. It seriously depends. Judge each situation accordingly.
Black conservatives come in a small variety of flavors, and they are very distinctive:
1) The ‘Pick Me’ Black conservative is usually an individual who felt deeply alienated from Black culture predating the 2000s and finds a sense of identity in cultural contrarianism, pointing the finger in judgement at those who once rejected or shamed them socially.
This individual is usually a cultural blank slate, not having a strong grasp on American history outside of the Eurocentric slant presented in US school systems. More often than not, Black conservatives in this group grew up in predominantly white communities and feel insecure about their inability to relate to the historical “Black experience” but also feel grateful that they were able to bypass “the struggle”. Utilizing the poorest of all logic for causation, these Black conservatives conclude that the problem is the culture and that simply exchanging Black culture for ‘the culture of success’ (read: white adjacency) would solve all our problems.
2) The ‘Old School’ Black conservative was raised on WWII culture and discipline, is the poster child of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps”, is absolutely willing to blame the victim because hard nosed self-shaming is all they know.
These Black conservatives are often political pundits and on-air celebrities, parroting the Republican platform and engaging audiences with the discussions of “family values”, religious freedom, and historic American conservatism. Their ideology was formed at the height of white supremacist economic propaganda, during the early 20th Century, when Black Americans largely believed that the hope of industry and freedom belonged to them also if they worked hard and followed ‘the rules’.
Because of their simplistic beliefs about causality, these Black conservatives tend to hold hard and fast beliefs about what Black people “need to do” as if simply changing their behavior will change how they are perceived and therefore the results they get from others, including racist whites.
These individuals tend to be very much tied to their image and how they are perceived by those in power, with a penchant for unquestioned assimilation in the name of capitalist realism.
