Ramblings' Journal

Vernon Robinson the "wrong kind" of black speaker at Bowdoin College?

The College Republicans at Maine's Bowdoin College invited former US Congressional candidate and current Republican Winston-Salem (NC) City Councilman Vernon Johnson to campus as part of their observance of Black History Month. They weren't ready for the firestorm that followed.

The co-president of Bowdoin's College Democrats, Alex Cornell du Houx, appeared on Monday's Michael Medved Show to defend his statements as published in the Bowdoin Orient.

Many found the rhetoric put forward by the College Republicans offensive and unwarranted. The claim, taken from Vernon Robinson's website, that "The Only Thing he has in Common with Jesse Jackson is a good TAN," [sic] which was used in the digest, was both divisive and offensive to many.

Also appearing on Medved's show was black Bowdoin student William Gilchrist, who was far more venomous in his letter to the Orient's editorial pages.

Bowdoin College Republicans displayed their lack of openness by inviting an outright "Uncle Tom" to speak during Black History Month. Any black speaker who refers to the Confederate flag as a "harmless display" is a man who has clearly never read a history book.

Gilchrist, in defending his use of the "Uncle Tom" slur to describe Robinson not only plays into the stereotype of a monolithic school of black American thought, he actually creates more of the dissention that he and the College Democrats on Bowdoin's campus claim to want to avoid.

Gilchrist also took issue with Robinson's description Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as "poverty pimps" who hustle the black community to their ends. Robinson is not the only black conservative to use such colorful metaphors to describe Jackson and Sharpton. Many -- myself included -- have used the same term ("poverty pimps") in the same context as Robinson on multiple occasions. But I guess such politically incorrect and frank language offended Gilchrist's sensibilities.

Gilchrist's insistence that Robinson is an "Uncle Tom" who "clearly has never read a history book" belies Robinson's own past as noted on his campaign site.

The son of a Tuskegee Airman and a nurse, I became an Eagle Scout before graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a B.S. in Middle Eastern Affairs and the University of Missouri with an M.B.A.

I earned the confidence of the voters and national conservative leaders the same way Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan did - by being willing to stand up for my traditional American conservative principles - no matter what the political cost and no matter what the liberal media try to say about me.

I don't head for the high grass when the Left turns up the political heat. That's just not my style. Indeed, I relish the fiery furnace.

That doesn't sound like someone who has forgotten where he's from or what he stands for.

Several questions come to mind when reading the letters in the Bowdoin campus newspaper and listening to the students on Medved's show:

What gives them (the College Democrats and others) the right to determine who the College Republicans invite to speak at their campus functions, whether they are black conservatives like Robinson or other conservative speakers (author and columnist Ann Coulter, whose appearances at other campuses are the target of liberals seeking to ban conservative speakers, immediately comes to mind)?

Why do Gilchrist and others of his mindset insist that those blacks whose ideologies are not exactly as theirs are "not really black?"

Why is it OK for confrontational and controversial left wing speakers like Michael Moore and Ward Chuchill to speak on college campuses, yet right wing speakers who are potentially as confrontational and controversial, like Robinson, Coulter, Ward Connerly or David Horowitz are the target of smear campaigns and attempts to have their appearances disrupted or cancelled?

People like du Houx and his College Democrats remind me of some white liberal callers I used to get on my radio show.

After listening to me and my views awhile, the would call and incredulously ask, "How dare you say the things you do, after all we have done for you!"

And I would answer, "Done for me? Done for me? I don't know you! And you certainly haven't done a damn thing for me but patronize me."

Usually the next thing those callers would hear is a dial-tone.

Robinson's appearance before the College Republicans at Bowdoin was certainly constructive, as are speeches and appearances by black conservatives across the nation. They show that black America is not a simple monolith, but a complex community, not unlike the rest of America. One with diverse views and ideologies and opinions. And they show that we are not the "bad guys" that Gilchrist and others like him want to portray us as. We have an equal stake in black America and in the rest of the nation.

We are proud of who we are. And we want to make a difference for our homes, our communities and our nation.

Posted by mhking at March 7, 2005 09:00 PM