Color-Coded Conservatism Bad As Color-Coded Liberalism

Anyone easily offended, especially those who happen to be color-coded conservatives, should stop reading here because I can assure you I’m about to hurt some feelings. And if you’re a Sean Hannity symbiont you really don’t want to read what I’m about to say. But if you can handle a fresh look at the truth read on.

Friday evening, as I was channel-surfing, I came across Hannity’s show. I paused just long enough to hear his opening spiel and glimpse his audience, several of whom I know personally and have worked/networked with over the years. Which makes what I’m about to say appear to be that much more of an indictment. For some it is, for others it’s an observation. But for Hannity it is fully intended to be an indictment.

Anyway, as I said, I was channel-surfing and happened upon a familiar groupage with Hannity blathering with a forlorn countenance about the hardships of being (gasp) an African-American conservative and what it took to escape liberalism.

Having been identified as (and even tolerant at one time of said assignation) black conservative, I cannot tell you how much I condemn the limitations placed upon a person who embraces being a color, notwithstanding an assignation that most cannot truthfully lay claim to.

We need to be conservatives. Period. We should not have our convictions prefaced in terms of color, much less viewed in terms of a country many Americans cannot easily find on a map — and a place that most Americans of color (some of those seated in the audience that night included) couldn’t name 10 Provinces in Africa if they had a gun held to their head.

There stood Hannity, like others before him, treating being a person of color who holds to conservative views and values as though it were a non-lethal disease or a shiny belt buckle. Why would not people just want to be recognized as a conservative? Why do they feel it is some sort of badge of honor to be recognized as a color?

Why do so many Americans fight to be a subset juxtaposed to part of the whole? The obvious answer is that some are prostituting their color no differently than leftist race-mongers. The only identifiable difference being one group has a pachyderm as a mascot, and the other group has an ass.

We are Americans, and being American should trump being a color. It is a damning indictment when people would rather be recognized as a color before they are recognized as a Christian.

In a speech I gave earlier this month, I said, “I am an American; I’m not a color.” And while those of limited intellectual capacity may be quick to attack me as being ashamed of my color that is the laughable argument of those with nothing to add to the debate.

Being recognized as a color-specific conservative is just a different spin than that of a liberal “color” — the bottom line being that both are using color as currency. But therein lies the desire for many who revel in being a color-coded conservative. They get to play leader. They get to play important.

I know I’m being harsh, and I do not apologize. Americans limit themselves by fighting to be recognized as a color before they’re recognized as an American. It is also using color to gain a certain degree of sympathy (read recognition) based on the belief of how hard it is to be a color-coded conservative.

If I’m trying to reach all Americans with a message of self-empowerment, a message of how to overcome self-inflicted adversity, and a message of the greatness of America — why would I cleave to the very thing that has been used in the past to oppress? Why would I try to convince people that the only way to get ahead is to be recognized as a color before they are recognized as an American? Does that not send a conflicted message?

And as for Hannity, I submit the people in the audience were simply useful idiots for him. They were his ratings bump for the week. It was his way of saying, “Look ma, got a bunch of coloreds on my show.” Yes, that’s harsh, but it’s not undeserving.

If Hannity cared about ending race-mongering, he would help those of us who are on the front lines. I don’t want his feigned, ratings-driven sympathy. I want him to stop playing games and actually help when he is called upon to do so.

I approached Hannity in the fall of 2010 asking him to assist me in promoting my effort to expose and retard the racial demagoguery of race-mongers and drive-by throwers of racial molotovs. I had challenged Al Sharpton, Walter Fauntroy (co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus), and Marc Morial Chairman of the National Urban League to a debate.

The three individuals had accused the Tea Party of being racist, and they had made over-the-top unfounded, and, I argued knowingly false accusations about Glenn Beck’s program that was scheduled to be held on the Mall in Washington, DC the same day as Dr. King’s historic “I Have A Dream” speech and I proposed a debate so they could defend their attacks.

I personally raised the money for the event. I personally took care of securing space at the National Press Club for the debate. All I asked of Hannity was to have both Sharpton and me on his show together so I could ask Sharpton what he based his allegations on and ask why he was ducking me. My repeated requests to Hannity fell on deaf ears. Immediately after my February 28, 2011, “Empty Chair Debate,” held because the three loudmouth racial demagogues were afraid to debate three on one, Hannity and Sharpton staged their own debate at a hotel in New York, and I’m told charged admission for what I was also told was nothing more than a love-fest between Sharpton and Hannity.

I confronted Hannity on twitter one evening while a colleague and me were tweeting. Upon realizing it was really me, Hannity stopped responding to my tweets wherein I had been asking him for clarity pursuant to his actions.

Bringing America together is about just that: bringing America together. And that cannot be accomplished by continuing to send the same outdated, regressive messages that blacks are a subset and subculture. And it certainly cannot be done by people and groups who will whisper in private that they know that what I’m saying is true, and that they agree with me, but that they cannot come out publicly because if they do, Hannity and Fox News Channel won’t have them as experts on their programming.

I refuse to be a color-coded conservative victim just as I refuse to be a color-coded liberal victim. I do not care if I’m not invited back to Fox News Channel programming. My soul is not for sale, especially not for a three-minute segment on a television show.