With Donald Trump bragging about his increasing support from Black voters, there is a media spotlight on Black right-wingers. And the brightest light is on Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor and the Republican nominee for governor.
Robinson is not your typical Black conservative. Rather, he is the real-life version of Clayton Bigsby, the “Black white supremacist” character created by comedian Dave Chappelle.
Bigsby was a blind man, unaware that he was Black, who made a political career out of hating Black people. In one infamous sketch, Bigsby screeches, “White Power!” In a speech laced with N-words, he declares that “America’s at war with Al-Qaeda, but we’re still losing the war against Al Sharpton!” Bigsby concludes: “Don’t let the liberal media tell you how to think and feel! If you have ‘hate’ in your heart, let it out!”
Now, American politics is facing the not-so-funny reality of Robinson. The Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina is reported to have labeled himself a “black NAZI” online.
Under cover of anonymity, Robinson wrote on an online pornography forum: “Mein Kampf is a good read. It’s very informative and not at all what I thought it would be. It’s a real eye-opener.”
Later he wrote: “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Washington right now!”
That mindset led Robinson to proclaim: “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few.”
Is that the face of Black conservatism? No, it isn’t. In truth, Robinson’s comic act is a tragic slander of every true Black conservative.
Conservative ideas for Black self-help and advancement — for example, backing charter schools to compete with failing public schools — have a long pedigree, reaching back to Booker T. Washington through Malcolm X. They still deserve attention.
By allowing himself to be used as a tool for white racists, Robinson is setting fire to those Black conservatives who think outside the box.
Michael Eric Dyson, a Vanderbilt professor, recently described Robinson as a puppet with “Black mouth moving, white supremacist ideas coming out.”
Robinson is not to be confused with real giants of Black conservative thinking — people such as Stanford economist Thomas Sowell, who has argued that minimum wage laws depress Black employment and called for decriminalization of all drugs.
Robinson could never be confused with my son, Raffi, a Black conservative who worked for the Republican National Committee. Raffi Williams personifies the importance of diverse thinking at every table of political power and regularly brings new ideas, challenging liberal orthodoxy, to this old man’s attention.
William T. Coleman, a black trailblazer as a lawyer and Republican Cabinet secretary, was nobody’s puppet. The same can be said of Condoleezza Rice, the first Black woman to serve in a presidential Cabinet.
Armstrong Williams, my friend, is an independent voice as a black Southerner with values rooted in the Black church and ideas that make him a leader in American media.
In sharp contrast, Robinson rose in North Carolina politics as a Black man whose primary value to Republicans was his willingness to voice far-right, even racist speech. The fact that his skin color did not fit his right-wing words confounded liberals and moderates of all races.
That led Robinson to rise fast in North Carolina politics and win the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, a man with a long history of racist statements and policies.
Trump once anointed Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
Similarly, Trump endorsed Herschel Walker, a former football player, to run as Georgia’s GOP candidate for U.S. Senate. Walker’s personal scandals and radical far-right comments made him a good fit for Trump, but Walker lost the race to a Democrat.
Robinson and Walker have perverted the proud tradition of Black conservatism into a modern-day minstrel show.
Trump exploits these ambitious political naifs to inoculate himself and his white MAGA supporters against being labeled as racists.
It is no accident that Black Republican superstars of recent vintage, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, Congressman Will Hurd of Texas, and Congresswoman Mia Love of Utah were sidelined as the GOP turned into the Trump Party.
Hurd even mounted a longshot primary challenge against Trump for the GOP nomination earlier this year.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump famously saw one Black man in a sea of white supporters and proclaimed without a drop of embarrassment: “Oh, look at my African American over there. Look at him. Are you the greatest?”
Trump won 8 percent of the Black vote that year. He increased that to twelve 12 percent in 2020.
This year, Trump condescendingly claims his indictments, his police mug shot, his conviction for fraud and the civil lawsuit against him for sexual assault have won him more support from young Black men who don’t pay much attention to politics and can be distracted by Trump’s macho bravado, multiple marriages and claims of wealth.
Trump carried North Carolina in 2016 and 2020. He won in 2020 by 2 percentage points, and the state has grown since with newcomers bringing more diverse and educated voters as well as more Democrats.
Trump wants to slice away votes belonging to young Black men unfamiliar with racist political games, to counter the changes to the state’s electorate.
It all fits a Chappelle comedy show sketch, but it is also a tragedy. Real Black conservative political figures are being dragged down by Robinson’s comic tragedy.
Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.
