“While I happen to be a Democrat, I think it’s important for African-Americans to be Republicans,” Martin Luther King III said on MSNBC’s “The Cycle,” earlier today. “I think it’s important for African-Americans to be independent. Uh, I’ll say this kinda — I also think it’s important to be engaged with the tea party, he continued.”
Co-host Touré then asked the son of famed civil rights advocate Martin Luther King Jr. if he thinks “the modern Democratic Party does enough to earn the overwhelming support that it gets for black people? Is it taking black people for granted in a way?”King largely agreed with Toure’s point, but wanted to stress that African Americans “are not a monolithic people.”
Touré was stunned by King’s comments, largely because Toure disqualifies the Tea Party as a racially motivated political arm of the Republican party that shouldn’t be “engaged” on any level. “Wh — why would it be important for us to be engaged with the tea party?” Touré struggled to ask.
“Because the only way you can change — the only way you can change is you have to be at least communicating,” King noted. “If there’s no communication, you just let someone have an agenda.”
But King did believe that tea party animus against President Obama was based, at least partially, on race. “It’s probably a combination of things,” he said. “But certainly the policies are the mask.”
Shorter MSNBC: If you are born black, you should die a Democrat.
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