The 2018 annual Conservative Political Action Conference might be over, but the bitter taste over racially insensitive remarks made by one of the organizers about Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, still lingers.
On Friday evening, Ian Walters, communications director for the American Conservative Union, which organizes and hosts the annual conference in National Harbor, Md., said that Steele was elected to lead the RNC simply because of his race.
“We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy. That was the wrong thing to do,” Walters, who is also a person of color, told the crowd.
Walters subsequently apologized to Steele over the phone later that evening.
I spoke with Mike Steele and apologized because the words I used do not capture my heart https://t.co/fG5vUqPqQp
— Ian B. Walters (@IanBWalters) February 24, 2018
On Saturday, however, Walters’ boss, Matt Schlapp, who serves as the chairman of the ACU, appeared on Steele’s SiriusXM radio show “Steele & Ungar” (co-hosted with Rick Ungar) to clear the air.
It was awkward to say the least.
“Those words that tumbled out of [Ian’s] mouth, I believed were unfortunate words,” Schlapp told Steele.
Steele fired back, saying, “It’s not ‘unfortunate.’ It is stupid to sit there and say that we elected a black man chairman of the party, and that was a mistake. Do you know how that sounds to the black community?”
The most cringe-worthy moment, however, came when Schlapp told Steele to “have some grace” about the circumstance.
This did not sit well with Steele.
“I’ve spent 41 years in this party. Forty-one. All right? I’ve taken crap you have no idea about, and I’ve carried this baggage. And for him to stand on that stage and denigrate my service to this party, and for you as a friend to sit there and go, ‘Well, you’ve been critical of this party.’ There’s only one word I can say, and I can’t say it on this air,” he said.
We’re going to venture a guess and say it was “bullshit.”
It’s understandable Steele feels this way. It exposes an ugly side of Republican politics that has existed for some time. While the Democrats have embraced their fair share of racists and tend to display a patronizing attitude toward people of color, Republicans have displayed much more overt racial insensitivity in recent years.
Many Republicans (or at least the ones not opposing him in the primary) didn’t really know what to say when Trump claimed that the “Mexican” judge in his fraud case (a native of Indiana) was, by the very fact of his ancestry, incapable of ruling fairly. When then-candidate Donald Trump failed to quickly disown the endorsement of former KKK grand wizard David Duke, many Republicans were fearful of denouncing him. It was only after Trump, as president, mishandled the white nationalist riots in Charlottesville in August 2017 that Republicans really began to question whether Trump is a racist. And the blind loyalty of many of his supporters to dismiss his flaws regarding race made us question if many of his supporters are racist, too.
While Walters is a person of color, Schlapp’s defense of him highlights how people of color have an even tougher time gaining traction in Republican politics. There are only three African-American Republicans (out of 52) serving in Congress: Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, and Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas. Meanwhile, there are only 11 Hispanic/Latino Republicans serving in Congress out of 46, (although two of the four Hispanic senators are Republicans). Schlapp and Walters together haven’t helped the party’s image with their treatment of Steele.
Siraj Hashmi is a commentary video editor and writer for the Washington Examiner.
