Barack Obama is currently nailing down 80-90% of the black vote in America. Would it be fair to say that race has a bit to do with that percentage? Perhaps. Geraldine Ferraro told a story on John Gibson’s radio show last week about a black man accosting a black female for supporting Hillary Clinton by saying something to the effect of, “How can you choose your gender over your race?”

Maybe I’m outside the mainstream, but I guess I look at the positions and beliefs of the candidate, and not the skin tone. Because of that, I’ve pretty much found myself without a candidate to support. I suppose I could just support the old white guy because he’s white, but I really don’t agree with too much of what he says or does.

Anyway, if you find yourself supporting Barack Obama because you are excited about him being the first black President, perhaps you could take the time to support these fine black Americans*:

1. J. C. Watts, Jr.

   (born November 18, 1957) is an American conservative Republican politician, CNN political contributor, former Representative from Oklahoma in the U.S. Congress, and former professional Canadian football player and much celebrated quarterback for the University of Oklahoma from 1977 to 1981. Watts is, to date, the last black Republican to serve in Congress.

   Watts captured national attention in 1996 with a speech before the Republican national convention, when he said, “You see character does count. For too long we have gotten by in a society that says the only thing right is to get by and the only thing wrong is to get caught. Character is doing what’s right when nobody is looking.”[2]

   Continuing to be a rising star for the national Republican Party, Watts was selected in 1997 to deliver the Republican response to President Bill Clinton’s State of the Union Address.[3] During the speech, Watts chastised some black Democrats and civil rights leaders as “race-hustling poverty pimps”, whose careers he said depend on keeping blacks dependent on the government.[4][1]





2. 
   

   Michael S. Steele

   (born October 19, 1958) is the chairman of GOPAC and a former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, having been elected on the same ticket as Governor Robert L. Ehrlich in 2002. He is the first African American to serve in a Maryland state-wide office and the first Republican lieutenant governor in the state since the position was created in 1970. He was, at the time, the highest-ranking elected African American Republican in the United States. On October 25, 2005, Steele announced his candidacy for the United States Senate seat being vacated by retiring senator Paul Sarbanes. On November 7, 2006, Steele lost the election to Democratic Congressman Ben Cardin. He currently appears on CNN’s The Situation Room and various shows on FOX News as a political pundit.

   Steele is opposed to abortion including in cases of rape and incest, but regarding Roe v. Wade itself, Steele has said that the principle of stare decisis ought to be followed.[citation needed] He supports federal funding for only some stem cell research (e.g., adult stem cell research or cord blood stem cell research) if it does not cause the destruction of a human embryo—as is the case in embryonic stem cell research.[citation needed] He supports free trade, tax cuts, school vouchers, welfare reform and tort reform.[citation needed] He opposes gay adoption and supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.[citation needed] Steele expressed serious concerns regarding the death penalty during his Senate campaign and has called for further study into its fairness and accuracy.

3. 
   

   Thomas Sowell

   (born June 30, 1930), is an American economist, political writer, and commentator. While often described as a “black conservative”, he prefers not to be labeled, and considers himself more libertarian than conservative.[1] He often writes from an economically laissez-faire perspective. He is currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science.

   Quotes:

   • “Most people who read The Communist Manifesto probably have no idea that it was written by a couple of young men who had never worked a day in their lives, and who nevertheless spoke boldly in the name of “the workers”.”
   • “Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.”
   • “Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.”
   • “The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.”
   • “Liberals seem to assume that, if you don’t believe in their particular political solutions, then you don’t really care about the people that they claim to want to help”
   • “One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain”
   • “Global warming” is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.”

4. Walter E. Williams, Ph. D.

   (born 1936 in Philadelphia) is an American economist and college professor. He is also a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian and sometimes conservative views. He is an occasional guest host of Rush Limbaugh’s radio program and Lawrence Kudlow’s Kudlow & Company TV program.

   As an economist, Williams often speaks and writes about virtues of the free market, the detriments of socialist systems and government intervention, and often cites real world examples to make his point. He has said “That’s a challenge I love: making economics fun and understandable.”

   Williams supports legalization of organ trafficking to increase the supply of organs for transplant, stating that the true proof of whether or not an individual owns something is whether or not they have the right to sell it. If selling organs is illegal, then subsequently individuals do not own their own bodies.

   Williams is an African-American, and is an outspoken champion of black education, frequently indicting the educational systems of inner city schools for perpetuating, in his words, “a fraud against African-American students and families by lowered standards.” He is also a critic of the minimum wage and affirmative action, believing that both practices are detrimental to blacks and detrimental to liberty. Williams especially emphasizes his belief that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community and do not adequately explain the situation blacks face today.

   Holding conservative and libertarian viewpoints, Williams criticizes gun control as endangering the innocent and failing to reduce crime.

   Williams praises capitalism (of a laissez-faire variety) as being the most moral and most productive system man has ever devised. “Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.”[2]

   He has gone on record as advocating the Free State Project in at least two columns and once on television. The Williams endorsement correlated with the largest single membership jump in the first 5000 phase of the project, a jump even higher than the results of the project being Slashdotted. He also believes in the right of U.S. states to secede from the union as several states attempted to do during the Civil War.[3] Williams has supported or been sympathetic toward various secessionist ideas in his writings.

5. 
   

   Laurence Allen “Larry” Elder

   (born April 27, 1952 in Los Angeles, California) aka “the Sage from South Central” is an American libertarian-minded Republican radio and former TV talk show host and author whose program The Larry Elder Show is heard on talk radio 790 KABC in Los Angeles, California. The show broadcasts live from 3-7 p.m. (Pacific Time), Monday through Friday. Elder has been on 790 KABC since 1994 and was syndicated on ABC Radio Networks from 2002 to 2007.

   Although Elder describes himself as a libertarian, he became a Republican in May, 2003, citing concern on the Libertarian Party’s view on foreign policy, and particularly its opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Elder resolutely supported.[1] The Libertarian Party, in Elder’s view, differs in ways from the libertarian philosophy which has roots in the Whig and Republican parties. Melding the two, he sometimes refers to himself as a “Republitarian”.

   Among Elder’s political views are support for free trade and school choice. He opposes the income tax and supports replacing it with the FairTax, a national retail sales tax. He is also a firm opponent of the war on drugs.

   Although he is not an Objectivist, he says that Atlas Shrugged, written by novelist Ayn Rand, is one of his favorite books.

   He has called himself a “libertarian with a small ‘l’” to signify his break from the national Libertarian Party concerning the “march to war” with Iraq in 2003. Whereas the Libertarians widely oppose international intervention with Iraq (in keeping with their platform opposing “unnecessary foreign entanglements”), Elder was a vocal proponent of the military action.

Honorable Mention:

• Wardell Connerly

  (born June 15, 1939) is an American political activist, businessman, and former University of California Regent. He is also the founder and the chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, a national non-profit organization in opposition to racial and gender preferences.[1]. He is considered to be the man behind California’s Proposition 209 outlawing race and gender-based preferences in state hiring and state university admissions, widely known as affirmative action. His twelve-year tenure on the Board of Regents ended on March 1, 2005.

• 
  

  Lynn Curtis Swann

  (born March 7, 1952, Alcoa, Tennessee) is a former American professional football player, sports broadcaster and a Republican politician.

• 
  

  Clarence Thomas

  (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist and has been an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1991. He is the second African American to serve on the nation’s highest court, after Justice Thurgood Marshall.

  Clarence Thomas is a conservative who acknowledges having some “libertarian leanings.”[18] Thomas is often described as an originalist. Although he has been compared to Antonin Scalia, he is less devoted to precedent than Scalia, who told Thomas’ biographer that Thomas “doesn’t believe in stare decisis, period. If a constitutional line of authority is wrong, he would say let’s get it right.”

• Herman Cain

  (Born December 13, 1945) is an American conservative newspaper columnist, businessman, politician, and radio talk-show host from Georgia. He is best known as the former chairman and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. Cain’s newspaper column is distributed by North Star Writers Group.

  In 1996, Cain was elected CEO and president of the NRA.

  In 2003, Cain announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for United States Senate from Georgia to replace retiring Senator Zell Miller. Cain campaigned on replacing the federal income tax code with the FairTax (a national sales tax plan), restructuring the Social Security system, reducing the influence of government and the courts in the health care system and increasing public participation in politics.

• 
  

  Alveda C. King

  is an American politician, author, and activist. She is a niece of the civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, a conservative “think-tank” in Washington, D.C. She is a former member of the Georgia House of Representatives and the founder of King for America.

These are just a few of the many black conservatives/libertarians who are routinely called “Uncle Tom” or worse. I feel safe saying that not one of these people would not want your vote if you were voting just because of their skin tone. But their belief systems, their politics, are the reason to support them.

^{*The text below the name is taken from each individual’s Wikipedia entry. The names serve as links to those entries.}