The power of black conservatives

Black conservatism is a particular form of conservative politics. As a movement, it’s American, with strengthening echoes in the UK, in France and beyond. Some of its most prominent activists would be classed, and class themselves, as straight-down-the-line conservatives. Some, such as Glenn Loury, an economics professor at Brown University, confess to being, as Irving Kristol’s neoconservative quip has it, ‘liberals mugged by reality.’

All would say of themselves that they are Americans first, patriots, proud of being and glad to be so, dismissive of the radical critique of their country, and harsh on black personalities and protestors who they believe parade a status of subjugation which they have not earned.

Black conservatives feel as much part of western culture as any white: Loury underscored that in a recent speech in Florida, to loud applause from his conservative listeners, as he said: ‘Tolstoy is mine, Dickens is mine, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein are mine!’

For black role models, they look to the escaped slaves and abolitionist activists Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman, and the Baptist pastor Martin Luther King – all of whom argued for equality and integration in American society.