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House negro: Why J.C. Watts is Congress' last black Republican - Book Review
Washington Monthly, Dec, 2002 by Ta-Nehisi Coates
J.C. WATTS'S MEMOIR, What Color is a Conservative?, should be a primary text for Republicans dumbfounded by black America's loyalty to the Democratic Party. Perhaps more than any other book in recent memory, Color effectively demonstrates why African ,Americans recoil in horror when "Republican" is preceded by the adjective "black." By no means should this revelation be attributed to Watts, however. Naive and obtuse, Color is a failed memoir that bears all the markings of Watts's press office. But in its lack of candor, in its total inability to grapple with complexity, Color unwittingly demonstrates why African Americans view Republicans with such disdain, and why, after Watts retires this year, there will not be a single black Republican in Congress.
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By now, Watts's story has been well trafficked through Washington's hoary corridors. Watts hails from Eufala, Okla. His father was a lifelong Democrat, with conservative leanings (pro-life, anti-welfare). He was stern, religious, and packed a pistol in his glove compartment. Watts was, of course, poor, but because his family embraced traditional values (hard work, community, church), they barely knew it.
Somewhat of a hellion, Watts was held in check by his tight-knit community and his father's penchant for corporal punishment. In high school and college, he excelled at athletics, rising to national fame as an all-American quarterback at the University of Oklahoma, where he won a national championship, went on to a career in the Canadian Football League, and became locally famous enough to run for Congress. Some years later, after hearing Senate candidate Don Nickles speak, he defied his father and became a Republican. It wasn't that much of a leap. He had been a conservative all along and was a Democrat only by inheritance. In 1994, Watts rode the Gingrich wave into office--the only one of 23 black Republicans running that year to win a congressional election--and brought his inspirational story to bitter, partisan Washington. Oh yeah, along the way, Watts had a few run-ins because he happened to be black.
And to Watts, that's all they are, minor run-ins without any systemic element. To his credit, he does not deny being the target of prejudice. But beyond this admission, he has almost nothing else to say on the subject--even though he gives himself plenty of chances. There are the whites who repeatedly question whether Watts, as a black man, can really play quarterback, invoking the common slur that blacks aren't smart enough to play that position. There is the white woman who calls Watts and his friends "dogs" There is the white man who tells Watts that even if he gets elected to Congress, he will just be another nigger. Yet, beset by all this venom, Watts--as he tells it--swallows all his anger after briefly lamenting the problem. In a way, his stiff upper lip is Jackie Robinson-noble, but the reader can't help but wonder about the conclusion he draws about the nature of American racism.
In one instance, as captain of his high school football team, Watts ends up being homecoming king and has to hold court with a white homecoming queen. The town's tradition has always held that the king and queen kiss at the center of the football field after being crowned. But despite being a popular guy in recently integrated Eufala, Watts and the queen do not kiss. Watts is amazingly vague about the whole incident: "The big night arrived, but in the end, we didn't have the kiss that might have caused more problems than it was certainly worth. No big decision was made. We just didn't do it" Interracial relationships in the South are weighted with a legacy of lynching, rape, and sheer terrorism; yet from all of this, Watts can only conclude, "as much as Eufala had changed, we still had issues that none of us were certain how to handle"
In another instance, Watts tells how two brothers, "the MacGuire boys," terrorized him and other little black children for sport, to the point of chasing them in a truck. Yet Watts refuses to analyze what effect this abuse had on him, simply saying that it all worked out in the end because the MacGuire boys ended up in jail. Later, he recounts meeting an elderly white couple at a restaurant in Canada. They strike up a conversation with Watts and eventually invite him to their home for wine and cheese. Watts declines, but is touched by the invitation and notes that such a thing would never happen in his hometown. But he refuses to ask why, and this is the book's central problem as a memoir. It spends a lot of words but reveals precious little, especially about its purported focus: race.
To Watts, racism in the South never rose above the misguided tomfoolery of a few ignoramuses, a view that pretty much mirrors that of the GOP and highlights why conservatives have a hard time making inroads into the black community. Modern conservative ideology rests on an idyllic vision of the past, a time when men worked hard, women tended the home, and the whole family went to church.
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