“Kanye West is what happens when negroes don’t read.”
That is how CNN commentator Bakari Sellers, who is black, responded to Kanye West’s meeting in the Oval Office this week with President Donald Trump. Sellers made his insulting remarks on the CNN Tonight program with host Don Lemon, who is also an African American, precipitating approving laughter from Lemon, and fellow commentator Tara Setmayer, who is also black.
Setmayer was particularly vicious in her insults of West because he dared to speak favorably of Trump, calling him “an attention whore like the president,” adding, “Black folks are about to trade Kanye West in the racial draft,” dismissing West as “the token Negro of the Trump Administration.”
There were even insinuations that West has mental problems, supposedly explaining his wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap at the White House.
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While the term “negro,” which simply means “black” in Spanish, may not be specifically racist, it is more of an archaic term little used today except as it was used by Sellers — as a calculated insult.
Lemon refused to back down on Thursday in CNN’s The Situation Room. Lemon said, “What I saw was a minstrel show.… [West] in front of all these white people, mostly white people embarrassing himself and embarrassing Americans but mostly African Americans because every one of them is siting either at home or with their phones watching this, cringing.” (Emphasis added).
Note that Lemon implied that every single black person in America thinks as he does — and not like Kanye West. That is the very definition of racist — defining everything according to race.
Donald Trump, Jr. responded on Twitter, accurately describing what had occurred. “Kanye dares to think for himself so @CNN commentators mock him, saying Kanye (a wildly successful businessman) ‘is what happens when negroes don’t read.’ At some point you have to ask, why is free thought & expression so dangerous & scary to liberals.”
The answer to Donals Jr.’s question is quite obvious. The overwhelming black support for liberal Democrats is essential to the Democrats’ continued competitiveness in American politics. Without the African American vote, which is consistently between 85-95 percent Democrat, the Democrats simply could not win a national election.
That is why every time a well-known black person such as Kanye West dares to support a Republican, or take a conservative viewpoint, that person must be shamed, and if necessary, have their reputation shredded, complete with name-calling, with names such as “Oreo” (referring to the cookie and meaning black on the outside, white on the inside), “Negroes,” or “Uncle Toms.”
In its May 2001 edition, Ebony listed the 100 most influential black Americans, but did not include such conservatives as Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams, Walter Williams, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Other than Barack Obama, Thomas is the highest-ranking African American in the history of the U.S. government, but because he was considered a conservative Republican, it was imperative for the Left to keep him off the Supreme Court and to destroy him as a conservative role model in the black community.
Long after Thomas took his seat on the Supreme Court, following his bruising confirmation battle, liberals have never given up their nefarious efforts to destroy his reputation. Among the nicer things said about Thomas during the past several years is that he is an “Uncle Tom.” (In the classic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the fictional character Uncle Tom is actually a heroic figure, but that is little-known today.) After Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in 2014 that Thomas was “an Uncle Tom,” Dana Bash of CNN asked him what he meant by that term. Thompson cited Thomas’ “decisions on the court,” such as Thomas’ vote against the constitutionality of ObamaCare.
Other black Republicans have had to deal with similar insulting remarks. I recall listening to a program on a local radio station here in Oklahoma years ago, when my congressman at the time, J.C. Watts, was being discussed. One of the guests, a black legislator and a Democrat, said that Watts, who is also black but is a Republican, was “not a real black.”
In his book What Color Is a Conservative? Watts recalled that after his switch from Democrat to Republican early in his congressional career, “the Norman Transcript, a staunchly Democrat paper, blasted me in an editorial saying that I used to be a hero.” He added that “when African Americans stray too far from black orthodoxy, we are punished and isolated in a warped kind of ideological apartheid.”
Watts wrote his book in 2002, and the West episode demonstrates that the situation has only gotten worse.
The motivation for this type of character assassination is to preserve black Americans as a reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party. Black Americans are much more conservative than is generally understood. As Watts said, the strong preference of blacks for the Democratic Party is more of a case of geography and family tradition than it is of ideology. Exit polls in California after the Proposition 8 battle (which defined marriage as between one man and one woman) indicated that African Americans were for it at a rate of 70 percent.
If the “black vote” ever lined up with their actual worldview, it would be devastating to the Democratic Party. Losing even one-third of that vote would doom them. That is why Kanye West or any other black person who dares to deviate from liberal dogma is going to find himself insulted, and if necessary, destroyed.
Image of Kanye West: Screenshot of NBC News YouTube video