Pundit Juan Williams, in a column
in The Hill, is urging black Democrats to back off of their rhetoric as several seek to portray newly-elected black congressional Republicans as traitors to their race.
"As a black Democrat I have to say: 2014 was a marquee year for black Republicans," Williams wrote, noting the big midterm wins of Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate from South Carolina, and Mia Love as a new congresswoman from Utah.
"But," Williams chastens, "the reaction from the NAACP and black Democrats has been revulsion."
"The real racism at play here is among those self-declared progressives who gloss over the fact that black people who are politically conservative and Republican have just as acute a sense of racial history — and of racial pride — as do their liberal counterparts," Williams defended as several prominent black Democrats and lawmakers spoke against their black Republican counterparts, The Hill noted.
Among those dismissing GOP gains were South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, who noted of Scott: "If you call progress electing a [black] person … who votes against the interests and aspirations of 95 percent of the black people in South Carolina, then I guess that’s progress."
Williams is not the only prominent black politico to speak out against black Democrats bashing black GOP candidates. Former Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice also criticized the backlash, telling Fox News's Brian Kilmeade that she was appalled by the conduct.
Professor Darron T. Smith, in an opinion piece published Nov. 6 for
The Huffington Post, noted the ascendancy of Love, a black Mormon Haitian-American.
"Mia, along with other notable black conservatives such as Allen West, Michael Steele, Amy Holmes, Alan Keyes and Tim Scott, subscribe to a party that rejects any notion of systemic racism as a central cause of black suffering within its basic tenets of individualism. What many conservatives fail to recognize is that individuals are connected to larger groups, and the group in which these Black Republicans belong persistently lags behind in every major social indicator," Smith noted.
Smith added: "Mia and others like her are seemingly out of touch with the political realities of African-Americans and what remains at stake for them."
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