I've always thought of Connerly as Dathan in The Ten Commandments, a real suck-up to the Pharoah.

Thoughts On Ward Connerly

Connerly is one of those so called 'black conservatives' who suffers from 'Stockholm Syndrome'. You know, the disorder evidenced by hostages and concentration camp victims where they've become so disoriented by their internalized oppression they've come to identify with their oppressors. If Jews held in German concentration camps can manifest these symptoms after four years of brutality/captivity, imagine what 20 generations of slavery, a legacy of Jim Crow, and a lifetime of bombardment with negative images can do to the collective psyche of a people. It is powerful stuff!

Those unable to work through this in a healthy way, do 'sense-making' around the larger society's motives, resist the negative imagery, and adapt a healthy self-concept, succumb to many self-destructive schools of thought.

Connerly's ilk shares a great deal with the stereotypical Gang-banger, who takes the lives of those who look like them with impunity, and use the 'N' word as an epitaph. They've been taught to hate themselves. It’s hard to be globally recognized as a negative reference group. Many don't adapt so well. Connerly is just an example of this in a suit and tie.

I always thought Connerly would look good with one of those burning tires around his neck.

Black conservatives are aloowed to dissent - and I find nothing wrong with black consdervatives who argue for fiscal conservatism ('cept the republicans are the ones who create the largest deficits). It is the self-righteous black conservatives who say - "I made it - why can't you?", that burn me. Ward Connerly, Clarence Thomas and others who claim that the world (and the US) is color neutral now and there should be no "special" priviledges. Of course, these self-same conservatives ignore the poor inner city schools, the virtual resegregation of America by school districts and the lack of industrial jobs to support our economy.
The conservatives say yes we can to equality - but no we can't to leveling the playing field. Of course the Bush administration has already leveled the playing field in the Justice department. It doesn't matter what color your skin is - only your political ideology counts for a job in Justice.....

If they want to talk about race, let's talk about race. One of the things that I like most about Obama is that he's not afraid of that conversation. He's willing, as John Stewart said, to talk to America about race as if we are adults. It plays well and gives the other side a lot of chances to stick their feet into their macacas. I mean... mouths.

To me,this was one of the most striking parts of his speech, in which he seeks to find rational reasons for racism, which is apparently not institutional and is merely a figment of black people's overly paranoid imagination:

"You get pulled over by the police solely because of your skin color, at night, by the way, when they can't really tell necessarily who's in the car, but you get pulled over by the police. You can't get a cab because of your skin color without examining the fact that the cab driver perhaps is Ethiopian, who was slashed on the neck by young black kids in New York or Washington, D.C. There are all kinds of explanations that you -- when you're a kid, you're followed in the grocery store, you're followed in the shopping malls solely because of your skin color, apart from the fact that owners of stores are always nervous, regardless of skin color, of a bunch of kids who are carousing through the shopping area. But institutional racism suggests that the whole institution is racist. More blacks are in prison solely because they're black rather than because of the number of crimes that are possibly committed."

That you should automatically assume blacks should be liberal is all just Marxist 'false consciousness' BS. Black people, white people, brown people, yellow people, blue people, purple people, are all individual people who have their own individual views. That you should think a black person's conservative views are somehow illegitimate simply shows your own form of racism on display.