On Wednesday, Republican Rep. Byron Donalds appeared on CNN, facing pushback from the network over his rejected application to join the Congressional Black Caucus, despite the fact that Donalds is black.
CNN anchor Brianna Keilar began the interview by asking whether Donalds’ defense of President Trump “might be incongruent with the mission of the CBC?”
“First of all, what the president said in the past has nothing to do with this discussion at all,” Donalds responded.
“You’ve defended him,” Keilar quickly fired back.
“As a black man in America, I’m allowed to have my own thoughts on who I choose to support and who I choose not to support,” Donalds said. Later, he added that bringing up “President Trump to try to make this about him does not matter.”
“It’s irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the situation at hand,” Donalds continued, referring back to his history of advocacy for the “black community.”
Not only was Keilar’s strategy indeed an attempt to derail Donalds’ comments with irrelevant declarations of “but Trump,” it was also indicative of the Left’s attitude toward matters of race.
In most cases, authority on issues of race are skin deep. Comments on racial inequity or systemic injustice are lauded as unquestionably accurate based solely on the skin color of the speaker — when said speaker adheres to the worldview of the modern Left. Al Sharpton, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ibram X. Kendi. Their thoughts on matters of race are presumed valid because of their identity.
However, black conservatives like Byron Donalds, Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, and Candace Owens ruin this lazy calculus. Suddenly, skin color is no longer a convenient shield which can be used to justify ideology.
The solution? Turn skin color into an ideology.
In other words, to “be black” — or, indeed, a member of any racial group — is not a genetic trait identifiable through visual variations in factors like melatonin. No, to “be black” is to embrace whatever the Left believe black people should believe.
This is precisely the same thought process which drove Joe Biden to declare, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
Because, for the Left, “blackness” is simply a binary measurement of political membership. “Black” means “a Democrat who happens to be black,” for whom authority on racial politics is assumed and protected. If you are, as Donalds said, a black person who dares to disagree, then your race comes a poor second to politics following your betrayal of your racial comrades.
The Democrats are happy to hide behind the banner of skin color, but only if the banner can be used as a shield, rather than a window into their own racist ideology.
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Source: Dailywire
