Political commentator Ann Coulter stirred up controversy by her comment, “Our blacks are better than their blacks,” regarding black Americans that support the Republican Party as opposed to the Democratic Party.
“By spending the last three decades leveling accusations of ‘racism’ every 10 seconds, liberals have made it virtually impossible for Americans to recognize real racism — for example, the racism constantly spewed at black conservatives,” Coulter said in her blog.
The post, inspired by the recent sexual harassment allegations against presidential candidate Herman Cain, said liberals have not backed up their arguments with facts, causing a misleading story. Coulter said white men can get away with sexual harassment with little media coverage, while she thinks it is a much bigger issue for black men.
MU College Republicans Vice President Amanda Swysgood said she agrees that the media treats the races differently.
“Herman Cain is being assaulted right now by the liberal media for allegations of sexual harassment when John Edwards is said to have a love child is not even in the main news,” she said. “Basically (it’s) the idea that Democrats are racist toward conservative black people just because it doesn’t fit into their idea of republicans being racist and that’s why they don’t like Barack Obama. So it makes them really uncomfortable.”
Swysgood said black Republicans have to work harder to defend their political views.
“It’s pretty easy to be liberal when you’re black and it’s not when you’re conservative,” she said. “Liberals manipulate minorities so much that if they are Republicans, then typically they have to fight about it with their families.”
Mizzou College Democrats President Matt Tharp said though he agreed that most black Americans are Democrats, they don’t always have to face a negative social stigma if they are not.
“It’s not appropriate to say that an African-American conservative has it harder than an African-American liberal and it’s also not right to criticize someone’s political choice based on their race,” Tharp said. “But we Democrats should never say that African Americans should be supporting the Democratic Party, that’s not right.”
Swysgood said in addition to facing a social stigma, black Republicans are also faced with harder questions.
“I am happy when republicans are interrogated because first of all republicans expect to be asked hard questions and liberals don’t ever,” she said. “We get to ask Barack Obama what his favorite color is and he gets offended.”
Tharp said he does not believe the questions asked are more or less difficult, but he said it wouldn’t matter if they were.
“The only thing that those debate questions are going to influence is the presidential primary voters, which has nothing to do with our political party at all,” he said. “Those questions are only going to influence one voter and that’s the Republican primary voter. It has nothing to do with the Democratic Party at all, it’s their own people. I don’t see how they can compare an African-American conservative to an African-American liberal when each party is having to appeal to their own base and not the other base.”