Black like...

...well, not like the leadership of some of the more prominent "Black" conservative groups. Following up on Kweisi Mfume's charge that some of those groups are little more than "make-believe black organizations," and a "collection of black hustlers" who have adopted a conservative agenda in return for "a few bucks a head," Joshua Holland does a little digging at The Gadflyer and proves Kweisi correct.

...I tuned into C-SPAN with interest to hear what a leading voice in the black conservative movement had to say. But then a funny thing happened: the African-American spokesperson for Project 21 caught a flat on the way to the studio, and the group's director had to fill in. And he was white.

As the segment began there was an awkward Wizard of Oz moment as C-SPAN's Robb Harlston – himself black – turned to Project 21's Caucasian director, David Almasi, and said, "Um...Project 21... a program for conservative African Americans...you're not African American."

Project 21, a subsidiary of the National Center for Public Policy Research, has a white president and vice president to go with their white executive director. Of course, that's not surprising. Those are probably the folks that NCPPR's all white board of directors know best. Still, kind of unusual for an organization billed as a leading voice for Black conservatism, don't you think?

Well, not that unusual at all, it turns out. For instance, the African American Republican Leadership Council, has a 15 member Advisory Panel. 13 of them are white, including the Free Congress Foundation's Paul Weyrich, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, the Reverend Lou Sheldon, Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, and Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Uh-huh. Champions of civil rights, each and every one.

There's nothing wrong with white folks, of course, but something here's not right.