# Posted 3:43 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE MAKING OF A BLACK CONSERVATIVE: Princella Smith is a tall, athletic, intelligent and well-spoken young woman. As the winner of MTV's "Stand Up and Holla" essay contest, she earned the right to address the Republican convnention.

Yesterday, OxBlog had the chance to sit down with Ms. Smith and talk to her about faith, politics and the future of the GOP. Also joining in were John Hinderaker, Kevin Aylward and Scott Sala.

The foremost quesiton on my mind at the beginning of the interview was why a young, intelligent black women chose to identify herself so fully and openly with the Republican party.

I am not suggesting that all African-Americans should vote Democratic. But when 90% of African-Americans support the same party, it is not just reasonable but important to ask what distinguishes those few who resist the dominant trend and support the GOP. And Ms. Smith was well-prepared to answer our questions:

OxBlog: Do people ever say that it’s remarkable that you’re both an
African-American and a Republican-American?

Ms. Smith: Every single interview I’ve had I’ve had to answer that
question…I think that you’d be surprised at the number of closeted
African-American Republicans there are...

OxBlog: What do you think the GOP could do to get more than 10 or 15 percent of the black vote, because it seems that election after election it’s going to the Democrats overwhelmingly. There’s a case to be made, but what it is it?

Princella's answer focused on the importance of communicating the Republican message more effectively to the African-American base. [Background noise on the tape made her precise words inaudible.] She said that Democrats "[ha]ve done a much better job of explaining their issues" but that Black Republicans do have powerful spokesman such as J.C. Watts who is

A very clear, very precise, very good speaker. He can speak to
anybody. White, black ,Asian, Puerto Rican, anybody.

I have to admit that I was skeptical of Ms. Smith's answer. Embattled but passionate minorities (in the political sense of the word) almost always prefer to explain their lack of success in terms of poor communication instead of accepting that there are valid reasons why the majority might ignore their message.

Even the Reagan administration held poor communication responsible for the enduring unpopularity of its Central American policy initiatives, despite the fact that the Great Communicator himself constantly made the case for those initiatives before massive audiences.

Instead of focusing on racial politics, I thought a better way to discover the well-spring of Ms. Smith's conservatism would be to ask her what issues she cares about, not what the media wants to ask her about:

OxBlog: Now we’ve been asking you a lot of questions about being Black and republican...but what do you want to talk about? Do you want to tell us about Iraq, do you want to tell us about free trade and outsourcing? What issue do you care most about?

Ms. Smith: Education has really been the one...[My parents,] they worked for everything they got…They always said to me "Education, education, education.”

...

OxBlog: An issue related to education is drug use among young people and also pregnancy. I was wondering how you feel, I guess, about the general Republican line on those issues. Do we need to move away from a “Just say no” legal enforcement approach to those issues and focus more on treatment?

PS: No! We need to just say no to drugs…It’s black and white.
It’s right or wrong.

I was becoming concerned about Ms. Smith's inflexibility. She seemd to have an almost disciplinary approach to politics:

Ms. Smith: There is an epidemic of unwed mothers...[their children] don’t have any kind of male role model at all. They either become very effeminate or they break out...

OxBlog: That leads into the issue of birth control. Republicans tend
to focus more on abstinence. Would it make sense to talk about abstinence to those who are willing to hear the message and for everyone else who doesn’t want to abstain, have them learn more about sex and about birth control?

Ms. Smith: I believe that job is the family’s...We have the same
problems as we did [in the 60 and 70s]...the only difference is that we’ve become so lax in raising our children.

I had to be impressed with Ms. Smith's consistency and commitment to principle. Individuals are responsible for their own behavior. Families, not governments, are resonsible for individuals. Compromising one's principles accomplishes nothing more than lowering standards.

But if that is Ms. Smith's message -- if that is Republicans' message for African-Americans -- no wonder 90% of them vote Democratic. As Ms. Smith said, there is an epidemic of single motherhood. And of drug use. And of gang warfare. And of crime. And yet in the midst of all this suffering, she has nothing to say except "Take responsibility for yourselves."

I admit that the instilling an ethic of personal responsibility is the most important challenge facing the African-American community today. Yet we can do more than condemn those who have alreayd succumbed to drug abuse or single motherhood. The government can facilitate the process of communal regeneration.

There is more, however, to Ms. Smith's conservatism. Thanks to Scott Sala thoughtful questions, Ms. Smith began to talk about her faith. She is the daugher of a minister and a very committed Christian. She noted that

They call the wife of the minister the First Lady. She has done an
excellent job of being a helpmate to my father.

Ms. Smith explained that "helpmate" is a very specific biblical term intended to designate the role of a woman vis-a-vis her husband. As the son of rabbi, I am also familiar with the verse to which Ms. Smith referred. It is Genesis 2:20, which the King James Bible renders as

And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a help meet for him.

The Hebrew word for help meet is shifhah. It often refers to females servants. Unsuprisingly, the use of this word to describe Eve has become the basis (not unfairly) for theological justifications of male dominance. [CORRECTION: The phrase used in Genesis 2:20 is ezer k'negdo, which might be translated as a "fitting helper". The phrase most often used to justify male dominance is Genesis 3:16 (not to be confused with Austin 3:16) in which God informs Eve of her punishment:

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy
conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Many thanks to Rabbi JH for pointing out my unfortuate mistake, which could have been avoided with a minimum of effort.]

As Ms. Smith explained,

I really believe that the male is the leader of the family.

She said that women are leaders as well, but not in the same way. And so it became increasingly clear how Ms. Smith is different from the overwhelming majority of African-Americans who vote Republican.

She subscribes to a powerful faith whose interpretation of gender roles bears little resemblance to the lived experience of black America. She subscribes to a faith whose fidelity to the Biblical word rules out all those compromises of principle that Democrats identify as a path to healing the divisions of the black community.

The issue here is not communication.
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