As for the Three Fires thing, since that involves the northern Great Lakes, I feel a personal connection to it, albeit acquired late and cheaply. It comes from my trip up north year before last. (Man, was it really that long ago?) One of the distinctive things about the U. P. is the Native American element there, which is rare east of the Mississippi. I find that it appeals to me, though I’m not one to fetishize Native culture. But I was thinking to myself that if someone from the Ojibwe nation were to make his or her way onto that list of speakers, that would certainly get my attention.

“I’m just not quite sure what Ms. Klacik hopes to achieve for Baltimore if she’s in Congress when I would think she could do more as mayor or something.” – Philip

To be the Mayor in a Democrat-run city, where the entire Council has not flipped and you have Democrats in State offices as well, would be an exercise in futility.
Congress gives her a pulpit with national reach, and gives us more firepower in the face-to-face with the Democrat Black Caucus.

“…Three Fires Confederacy, that name I would remember” – please tell us more!

I’m thinking this whole thing of putting forward this considerable number of black and other minority speakers (that reminds me, I have to find a minute to listen to the Navajo Nation fellow – no, I’m sorry, I can’t remember his name off the top of my head – now if it had been somebody from the Three Fires Confederacy, that name I would remember, but anyway…) is really increasing in efficacy because it’s a way of showing that the public face of the black community doesn’t have to be just the freak show in Kenosha or Minneapolis or Chicago. Basically what Neo said in her response to Zaphod above.

It’s indeed about breaking the cycle, showing that here are independent-minded blacks who aren’t just standing around being tokens, but are showing what good can be and is being achieved. As Sen. Scott said yesterday, we have a ways to go, but look how far we have come. (It’s a pity we couldn’t see Michael Jordan at this convention, but maybe in a decade or two….) It’s tackling the entire thesis that the Democrats have built up head-on.

Oh, and R2L, that was great.

I could see the same thing in the wider world: black broadcasters presenting the news, sports, and weather; successful black actors in the movies I watched; almost a dominance in the sports world; more blacks in senior business mgmt. positions or entering politics; occasional evidence of successful blacks in academia and education; etc. My father had a black doctor in 1999 as it happened.

And then Obama and Holder stirred the pot, advanced the elements of the racialist industry, and things started to fall apart. Or were these issues of prejudice buried all along and I and many whites were simply ignorant of how the less successful blacks were faring? We came to believe the younger generations had had greater levels of personal integration and reacted positively to their experiences, further reducing prejudice. Or was that only really among the college crowd? Yet since retirement I have had occasion to meet several fully competent skilled black tradesmen. And today we are now seeing more and more advertisements showing interracial relationships and marriages/children, thus promoting but also reflecting increased racial comity in our society.

In terms of the RNC: if we/they can promote the success sequence of education/skill set, work/job, marriage, children, while emphasizing that reality can only provide equal opportunity but not equal outcomes, maybe we can still return to those “halcyon” days of 2007. We have to find a way to slap down those who denigrate children who study as “acting white” and similar negative forces — but really the “we” has to be the successful black people as whites apparently cannot be trusted to understand or empathize with the blacks. Well, change has to occur, a recurring theme of our hostess.

Thomas Sowell is obviously your – and my, and just about everyone’s – intellectual and moral superior. But if you’re familiar with his work on race and culture, and if you understood it (and you seem to have more than enough intelligence to do so), you would understand that he makes an extremely persuasive case that culture is the culprit. The question is how to break that cycle among the minority of black people (and it definitely is a minority) and white people who are in dysfunctional cultures.

I don’t have an answer. But I’m surprised you don’t see how the sort of black people speaking at the RNC, showing how intelligent, and full of merit and courage they are, can be effective. How the more of them that people can see, the more effect they can have in particular on other black people who may not even be aware that there is such a thing as a black Republican.

You write that you don’t “think that a random sampling on the Streets of Kenosha or Baltimore would elicit much knowledge of or admiration for Thomas Sowell.” Well, very few people in the US of ANY color or in any city know much about the work of Thomas Sowell, and that includes the whitest and most highly educated.

I was watching a bit of the RNC tonight, and I was quite impressed with the story of Jon Ponder. If you had taken a look at his life only for the first 38 years of it, you would say he was a scumbag, but he turned it around utterly afterwards. Most people, except for psychopaths, are not irretrievable. But our educational system, our media, and so many of our other institutions have failed to set example for people and give them the tools and guidance they need to live better lives.

[Small note: that last apostrophe is intentional – I was referring to the talk given by the McCloskeys, not meaning the McCloskeys in the act of talking… I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I’m slacking off in the orthography department. 🙂 ]

I’m just not quite sure what Ms. Klacik hopes to achieve for Baltimore if she’s in Congress when I would think she could do more as mayor or something.

Anyway, I think this may be one of those times when the GOP starts to move beyond tokenism into more substantial territory with minority voters and their perceptions. Interesting that this should occur under Trump, although I don’t know how much of a direct role he had in speaker selection – I kind of hope not much, because I think it healthier for the party as a whole not for the show to be too much in the hands of one person, directly or otherwise.

I imagine Herman Cain would have been given a speaking slot as well, had he lived. :'(

By the way, seeing the McCloskey’s all dolled up and proper looking was a hoot—I kept laughing seeing them in my minds eye the way they looked and carried their guns earlier in the summer.

I look forward to each night this week.

It would be great if I could say that I am impressed. Alas. I do wonder what you contribute to this society, that justifies such imperiousness. My guess is, based on no more than your tone, that you are an academic; perhaps in one of the so-called social sciences.

By the way, I consider Herschel Walker, Senator Scott, Ms. Klacik, and any other “persons of color” who align with Conservatives or Republicans at this particular time to be heroes. We will never know what price they pay for doing so. You shame yourself by denigrating them.

Now that I have seen your shtick, I am forewarned if you return.