A couple of weeks ago the group of conservative women I belong to (CWAN) was meeting,we had an unexpected visitor who had a request. He’s a Black conservative in Williamson County who wanted help in bringing Blacks of Williamson County into the party. We then met with him last week to more fully discuss this project. My view on minorities in the Republican Party has been the philosophy should be the draw not specific pandering to specific minority groups. He pointed out that the way to Blacks was through their minister. The minister holds the power in the Black culture. I’m still not convinced since I believe that conservative values and beliefs should be the draw but; if extending ourselves to a group of Black ministers gets the dialogue moving then I’m in.

Interesting enough Shelby Steele today writes a WSJ Op-Ed – Why the GOP Can’t Win With Minorities

He talks about the history behind the move of Blacks from conservativism to liberalism. I’m not sure how optimistic this will be for Blacks joining the GOP. Fifty years of pandering by the Left’s “redemptive liberalism” has produced the tactic by squishy Republicans to moderate conservative policies which has been an unsuccessful marketing ploy. Moving to the Left doesn’t work and will never work for Republicans since that only makes the Republican Party look like Democrats. Why switch parties?

Per Shelby Steele (a few quips from his op-ed):

snip…When redemption became a term of power, “redemptive liberalism” was born — a new activist liberalism that gave itself a “redemptive” profile by focusing on social engineering rather than liberalism’s classic focus on individual freedom. In the ’60s there was no time to allow individual freedom to render up the social good.

snip….But conservatism sees moral authority more in a discipline of principles than in activism. It sees ideas of the good like “diversity” as mere pretext for the social engineering that always leads to unintended and oppressive consequences. Conservatism would enforce the principles that ensure individual freedom, and then allow “the good” to happen by “invisible hand.”

snip….Added to this, American minorities of color — especially blacks — are often born into grievance-focused identities. The idea of grievance will seem to define them in some eternal way, and it will link them atavistically to a community of loved ones.

snip….And this identity calls minorities to an anticonservative orientation to American politics. It makes for an almost ancestral resistance to conservatism. One’s identity of grievance is flattered by the moral activism of the left and offended by the invisible hand of the right.

snip…What drew me to conservatism years ago was the fact that it gave discipline a slightly higher status than virtue. This meant it could not be subverted by passing notions of the good. It could be above moral vanity. And so it made no special promises to me as a minority. It neglected me in every way except as a human being who wanted freedom. Until my encounter with conservatism I had only known the racial determinism of segregation on the one hand and of white liberalism on the other — two varieties of white supremacy in which I could only be dependent and inferior.

snip…The appeal of conservatism is the mutuality it asserts between individual and political freedom, its beautiful idea of a free man in a free society. And it offers minorities the one thing they can never get from liberalism: human rather than racial dignity.

I think the man we met with last week has it right, the dialogue needs to be started in the Black churches through the ministers. Think about it, during campaigns where do we always see Democrat candidates showing up? In Black churches preaching their campaign ’sermons’ from the pulpit.

Republican Party, GOP, Black GOP, Shelby Steele, Williamson County, CWAN