Raynard Jackson
I have received so many phone calls and e-mails asking me about the continued firings of the few Black staffers at the Republican National Committee (RNC) that I have decided to share my thoughts on this issue.
First of all, these staffers deserved to be fired and it should have happened a long time ago. They were in way over their heads and their level of arrogance was just astonishing.
But in fairness to them, they were set up for failure by the party from the very beginning. Many in the party felt the need to hire Blacks, not because they really wanted to diversify the party, but in some of the party’s thinking, they can’t be called “racist” because they hired a few Blacks. I am not joking. This really is the thinking of many in the party.
The RNC is not a policy making body in regards to legislation. But it is political malpractice to claim to want more Blacks in our party without equipping staff to go into the Black community with specific pieces of legislation that deal with issues relevant to our community.
You can’t go into the Black community and not address the issue of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court told Congress that they needed to update the formula used to determine how section 5 is enforced.
Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress since the court’s decision, but have done absolutely nothing to address this issue. Republican congressman from Wisconsin, Jim Sensenbrenner has tried to work on a bipartisan solution to this issue and the house leadership has refused to let his proposed legislation come to the floor.
These fired staffers had absolutely no engagement with our congressional leaders, rank and file members, or their staffers. So, to this extent they were set up for failure.
So, you have staffers going into the Black community with no specific solutions to the problems that are important to them—voting rights, access to capital, education reform, etc. Blacks are being told that the Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party of lower taxes, the party of more individual freedom—yada, yada, yada.
They go into the Hispanic community offering amnesty; they go into the homosexual community offering protective class status; but they come to the Black community with trickle down legislation.
You have people inside the RNC who actually think they know more about the Black community than Blacks. I am speaking from personal experience.
The party needs to hire Blacks like Allegra McCullough, Shannon Reeves, or Jennifer Carroll to have total control over engagement with the Black community. Then empower them to hire millennials to work under their leadership.
These three people are adults who cannot be bullied by RNC staff into being timid and subservient; they have relationships with the Black business community throughout the country; and they have personal relationships with various members of congress and know how to get them to move on specific legislation relevant to the Black community.
So, you can hire all the Blacks that you want, but if the hiring is not paired with specific policy initiatives, the party will once again show that they are not serious about engagement with the Black community.
Raynard Jackson is founder and chairman of Black Americans for a Better Future (BAFBF), a federally registered 527 Super PAC established to get more Blacks involved in the Republican Party. For more information about BAFBF, visit bafbf.org.