Why Shouldn't Blacks Be Conservatives?

From a story (surprisingly) coming from the AP (via Breitbart), black conservatives are taking heat...for being black conservatives.

The story actually focuses on blacks who support the Tea Party movement, but this kind of thing has been going on for some time.  Colin Powell was routinely criticized for being a black man working for the Bush administration.  Condoleezza Rice came under similar criticism.  Michael Steele was also criticized (and reportedly attacked with Oreo cookies during his run for Lieutenant Governor of Maryland).  It didn't matter that their positions within the government were "historic" (a word that the Left just loves to throw around).  They're black, and don't conform to what the Left sees as the norm for black people, and that in itself is enough to earn them the Left's vitriol.

From the article, quoting Timothy F. Johnson of the Frederick Douglass Foundation:

"Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks,"

This is what continually astounds me on the issue of African-American conservatives.  Liberals are the ones who say we should move beyond race.  Liberals are the ones who urge us to avoid labels.  But when the rubber meets the road, the Left is all talk and no action.  They are the first ones to look at race.  They are the first ones to apply labels.  They are the ones who blindly enforce their stereotype that all minorities should, by default, be Democrats.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are the ones who are more willing to look beyond race.  One of my favorite political conversations of all time was when I watched a conservative African-American woman take on a white liberal man who said he planned to vote for Barack Obama because he would be the first black president.  For conservatives, it's not about race, it's about ideals and ideas.  It's not about race, it's about policy.

The defining line from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have A Dream" speech states:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. 

The Left has made it abundantly clear that they have no intention of living up to this, the defining ideal of the Civil Rights Movement that they purport to treasure so dearly.  Whenever the Left says they want racial equality, the first thing they do is focus on skin color, judging and stereotyping people arbitrarily based solely on the color of their skin.  

Those on the Left love to engage in race-baiting, but in the final analysis, it's very clear who the real racists are.