The Washington Times reports today about the Maryland Senate race in which Michael Steele, the black Lt. Governor running to replace the retiring Sen. Paul Sarbanes.
Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican.
Such attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an "Uncle Tom" and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log.
snip
"There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names," said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, a black Baltimore Democrat, said she does not expect her party to pull any punches, including racial jabs at Mr. Steele, in the race to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes.
"Party trumps race, especially on the national level," she said. "If you are bold enough to run, you have to take whatever the voters are going to give you. It's democracy, perhaps at its worse, but it is democracy."
Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.
snip
In 2001, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. [who is white] called Mr. Steele an "Uncle Tom," when Mr. Steele headed the state Republican Party. Mr. Miller, Prince George's County Democrat, later apologized for the remark.
"That's not racial. If they call him the "N' word, that's racial," Mrs. Marriott said. "Just because he's black, everything bad you say about him isn't racial." (emphasis added)
But calling a black man an Uncle Tome is racial, by its very nature. The fact that some of these idiots are elected leaders in Maryland scares me to death.
I wrote about this kind of insenstivity over at Watchblog, noting:
Many blacks simply cannot accept any black politician or leader having a viewpoint that runs counter to their own. Leaders like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Maryland Lt. Governor and now Senate candidate Michael Steele can only be viewed as traitors to their race because they are Republican or conservative, much like the Left’s derision of Justice Clarence Thomas.
By the way, this posting received a bunch of comments calling me a racist or calling republicans in general racist.
This attitude among black leaders in Maryland makes me ashamed to call myself a Marylander. In Maryland apparently, you are free to demonize a man whose political outlook differs from yours, but only if you are black. A black man, the first black to be elected to statewide office of any party, apparently cannot be free to have his own political beliefs.
This is the type of rhetoric that is going to come back to haunt black leaders in Maryland. The current front-runner for the Democratic nomination for Senate is Rep. Ben Cardin (who is white and apparently smart enough to avoid this stupidity). But I have yet to see Cardin denounce this kind of talk. If Cardin hopes to win support of moderate and independent voters in this state, he must denounce this lunacy in the strongest terms possible.
Steele will get a boost out of this diatribe against him, if only out of sympathy. But he should keep this stuff in his back pocket and when campaigning in swing districts in teh state, pull it out and say, "Are these the people you want deciding who represents you in the Senate. These haters of anyone who is different from them."
If these comments are not racist, what comments are?
Michelle Malkin (another Marylander) has a great round-up. See also Captain's Quarters and Protein Wisdom.
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