Today, I read an article by Jennifer Steinhauer at the New York Times where she discusses the 32 black Republicans that are running in primaries across the United States.  At first read, her article sounds like a great promotion for the various black Republican candidates.  However, once the article sinks in, you realize she is tacitly saying they have no shot at winning, questions why they are Republicans, and gives the racist treatment to the Tea Party movement (which supports many of these candidates). 

You can hear in her article as she questions the black Republicans' chances of winning by using other people's words:

“Party affiliation is not a barrier to inspiration,” Mr. Steele said in an e-mail message. “Certainly, the president’s election was and remains an inspiration to many.”

But Democrats and other political experts express skepticism about black Republicans’ chances in November. “In 1994 and 2000, there were 24 black G.O.P. nominees,” said Donna Brazile, a Democratic political strategist who ran Al Gore’s presidential campaign and who is black. “And you didn’t see many of them win their elections.”

She continues in her own words:

Many of the candidates are trying to align themselves with the Tea Partiers, insisting that the racial dynamics of that movement have been overblown. Videos taken at some Tea Party rallies show some participants holding up signs with racially inflammatory language.

I like how she throws out that last line.  No links given despite the article posted online, but just a blanket statement with no citation.  Not that the New York Times has ever had a problem before with reporters not giving proper citation...

Steinhauer continues:

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that 25 percent of self-identified Tea Party supporters think that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites, compared with 11 percent of the general public.

So that alone paints the Tea Partiers as racist?  Less than 25% think Congress is doing a good job , so using Steinhauer's logic, can we say that all of Congress is doing a great job?  Besides, when President Obama himself calls on minorities, not all of America, to help him out in the 2010 elections , it doesn't hold well for the argument that he holds all of America in the same regards. 

Steinhauer does, to her credit, quote Allen West who is running in Florida's 22nd Republican Congressional Primary:

The black candidates interviewed overwhelmingly called the racist narrative a news media fiction. “I have been to these rallies, and there are hot dogs and banjos,” said Mr. West, the candidate in Florida, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army. “There is no violence or racism there.”

Then Steinhauer gets to her thesis regarding blacks running on a Republican ticket:

Still, black Republicans face a double hurdle: black Democrats who are disinclined to back them in a general election, and incongruity with white Republicans, who sometimes do not welcome the blacks whom party officials claim to covet as new members.

She fails to state why black Democrats won't support blacks running on a Republican ticket, but that doesn't stop her from sheepishly theorizing that Republicans may be racist.

After reading this article, it seemed like Steinhauer was questioning the black men and women who are running on the Republican ticket this year.  She was questioning their electability on shaky grounds.  She also trotted out the mainstream media's take on the Tea Party movement as racists.  If you had put her article's premise as a mathematical equation, it would probably look something like this:

Black Americans + Republicans + Tea Party movement x 32 = WTF?!  Blacks are only supposed to run as Democrats and vote as Democrats!  Why are they voting and running on the Republican ticket and as conservatives on top of that?!?!?!?!  And aligning themselves with the Tea Party movement?!??!?!  Has the world gone mad????

You can see how Steinhauer and her elitist friends at the New York Times and the Democrat party would have trouble grasping that just because someone is black, that they are not welcome in the Republican party, the Tea Party movement or will always vote the way the elites tell them to.  When will the left wake up and realize that conservatives/Tea Party/Republicans don't care what someone's skin color is?