Black America and the Right

While not as uncommon as popularly supposed, the black conservative is ever considered an oxymoron, thought by most people left of center to be deluded at best and evil at worst — and certainly “self-hating.”

As someone who would have been readily classified as liberal on race in about 1960 but who disagrees with the leftist swing of civil-rights orthodoxy since, I have broken bread with conservatives extensively. I am therefore often regarded as a “black conservative” and have been bemused that many reasonable people have sincerely believed that I express my views solely in a quest for lucrative speaking engagements.