When Black Republicans Go Bad

by Trey Ellis

Why are we so surprised that Claude Allen, until recently the President's chief domestic policy advisor, is being accused of scamming Target out of over $5000? He's a black man who got his start working for Jesse Helms, the former Senator who had the delightful habit of calling all black people, "Fred."

Man, what I wouldn't give to be Claude Allen's shrink. The inside of his brain must look like Saigon in the last days of the war ("We shall overcome! / Shut up, nigger. / Who you calling nigger? / Did I say, "nigger." I meant, "Fred.").

There must be something about being a black Republican that drives you a little batty. Just look at Allen's comrades in arms Allen Keyes and Clarence Thomas. I mean, who in their right mind sees pubic hairs in a can of Coke?

Many black Republicans, it seems, stake out ultra-right-wing positions perhaps to prove their bona fides to their white superiors. Claude Allen, while working for Helms, accused Helms' then opponent of being linked to "queers," and, according to the Washington Post, "once he kept Medicaid funds from an impoverished rape victim who wanted an abortion." And time and time again Justice Thomas has proven to be just an echo chamber, a double vote, for his intellectual overseer Justice Scalia.

I've got it. Maybe black Republicans are like transvestites? Transvestites affect a hyper-femininity, their nails are always perfect, their bags always match their shoes. In the same way, many black Republicans, it seems, affect a "hyper-whiteness," staking out positions that even whites in the South grew out of in the Fifties.

No wonder every now and again they snap. Perhaps in Mr. Allen's warped ideology he associated petty criminality with "blackness" and he'd been in drag so long that he longed desperately to come "home." And remember Clarence Thomas also acted out, only in hyper-sexual ways, bragging to Anita Hill about the size of his schlong.

Mr. Allen, Justice Thomas, blackness isn't crime, violence and sexuality. Willie Horton isn't the sum of us. He's just how many on your side have summed us up.

Don't believe the hype.