Are we going to have to wait for every one of the bullheaded bigoted white conservatives strangling the Republican Party into submission to drop dead before we get a Black GOP candidate who doesn’t sound like Uncle Ruckus’ lovechild from a one-night stand loving Klansman?
I’m hoping not because as the country’s demographics continue to shift towards people the color of fried chicken and blackened catfish versus a bowl of grits, it’d be best if the Grand Old Party found minority candidates who didn’t sound like the sight of their own skin makes them squeal in disgust. Meet E.W. Jackson, Virginia’s new Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. Jackson is the first Black candidate the party has nominated for statewide office since 1988. It’s too bad he sounds like your garden-variety pasty person harboring lots of prejudice.
Case in point: in 2011 Jackson claimed that the constitution’s original clause that counted Blacks as three-fifths of a person was an “anti-slavery amendment.” Talking Points Memo reports that the statement was used to attack President Obama after a pastor at a church service he attended noted the clause highlighted the country’s history with racism.
Jackson said: “Rev. [Charles Wallace] Smith must not have understood the 3/5ths clause was an anti-slavery amendment. Its purpose was to limit the voting power of slave holding states.”
In reality, the clause was used as a means to appease the desires of Southern slave owners looking to enhance their congressional representation. Counting African slaves as three-fifths of a person was a “compromise” that helped enhance the political muscle of Southern states. If anything, the measure only made it all the more difficult to abolish slavery; but I suppose when you’re in the business of patronizing Confederacy-loving constituents one must remix history for the cause.
After all, Jackson is someone who has asserted that he’s not African America, but “American.” Apparently, there is a difference so staunch that you have damn near sing it.
It gets worse.
Jackson referred to the Obamas as “the intellectual cousins and heirs of a Communist, collectivist way of thinking which is anathema to what this country is all about.” In a YouTube clip last September, Jackson argued, “Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to [Black] lives than the KKK ever was. And the Democrat Party and the [Black] civil rights allies are partners in this genocide.” Jackson also thinks Atheists and Muslims represent an “evil presence.”
With that in mind, it should be surprising to no one that Jackson also thinks very little of gay people.
To Jackson, homosexuality “poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies; it brings the judgment of God unlike very few [sic] things that we can think of.” He also operates under the impression that gays are “frankly very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally and they see everything through the lens of homosexuality.” Naturally, he likens homosexuality to pedophilia, too.
He doesn’t apologize for any of the incendiary remarks, quipping to reporters, “I don’t have anything to rephrase or to apologize for. I would just say, people should not paint me as one-dimensional. I have a whole lot of concerns.” He reportedly then went on to mention jobs and the economy.
Jackson went on to note, “We are going to explode the lies and the myths about the conservative movement!”
I don’t know what channel this man is watching, but he’s embodies everything about many would say about his brand of conservative: Ultra-conservative; a hateful jackass falsely name of Jesus; ill informed; mind-numbingly irritating. The same goes for the contemporary Black conservative: A Black face spouting the kind of nonsense you’d expect to hear a gathering of White nationalists.
And considering the rise in attacks on gay men in New York City of all places, I can’t help but think that people like E.W. Jackson—who help create the sort of hatred of gays that cause nutcases to lash out at people— can crawl under a rock and stay there until the stupid slips away by a substantial amount.
Suffice to say, Republicans, can you send this Black from whence he came and try again. In fact, Google “Colin Powell” and try to find someone like him. Otherwise, don’t even bother.
