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You Down With GOP?

By Andy Kroll - Oct 31st, 2008 at 1:49 pm

The following is the first of two posts on The Hip-Hop Republicans, a group of young people aiming to reinvent the Republican Party. Look for the second post later today.

As Republican presidential hopeful John McCain called reggaetón superstar Daddy Yankee to the stage at a Phoenix campaign stop in late August, the contrasts were striking. Looking stiff and wearing the customary suit and tie, McCain smiled awkwardly, while Yankee, whose real name is Ramón Ayala, moved coolly across the stage, greeting the swooning young high school students in the audience from behind a pair of blacked-out sunglasses. Here was a 72-year-old U.S. senator who listed ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” as his favorite all-time song alongside a 31-year-old Latin Grammy-winning musician from Puerto Rico known for such hits as “Gasolina” and “Lo Que Pasó, Pasó.” Yet what was most striking about that particular rally was the purpose of Ayala’s appearance: to endorse McCain’s run for the White House. “I believe in his ideas and proposals to lead this nation,” Ayala told the audience. “He’s been a fighter for the Hispanic community, and I know that, me personally, I choose him as the best candidate because he’s been a fighter for the immigration issue.”

For a political party usually associated with the sad slide guitars and Joe Sixpack ballads of country music, the reggaetón star’s backing of McCain was unprecedented. Yet Ayala’s endorsement is but one example of a burgeoning segment of the Republican Party that is younger, more progressive, and represents a new alternative to Bush and Cheney. At the center of this GOP avant-garde movement are the Hip-Hop Republicans, a group of young, black men and women who believe that the Republican Party must seriously confront issues of race, must turn its attention back to the United States’ urban centers, and should use traditional Republican solutions to solve the ills of our cities.

The Hip-Hop Republicans consist of contributors who write about racial, political and cultural issues on the group’s website and weigh in on its radio show, HipHopRepublican Radio. Unlike their predecessors in the GOP, Hip-Hop Republicans consider themselves a break from earlier forms of black Republicanism. As Lenny McAllister, a North Carolina-based member of the Hip Hop Republicans, wrote on The Root, “Hip-Hop Republicans grew up with the influence of hip-hop culture and, unlike their peers over age 50, are able to see how Republican values and policies should be applied to urban issues.”

McAllister went on to explain that whereas black Republicanism was reactive, Hip-Hop Republicans are quite the opposite. “If Black Republicanism is about assimilating into old-school GOP culture,” he wrote, “then Hip-Hop Republicanism is about changing GOP culture to look, feel, and sound more like us.”

The first step toward changing that GOP culture is cultivating serious discussions about race within the party. In a recent post on the group’s website, Richard Ivory, a New York-based blogger and activist who founded the Hip-Hop Republicans, used the controversy over whether McCain calling Obama “that one” was racist to illustrate how disconnected the Republican Party is on contemporary racial issues. “The truth is race matters, and nothing will show this like McCain losing the election,” Ivory wrote. “He can ignore race and pretend it does not exist, but it will bite him in the end. The failure by the GOP to provide a truth squad and a group of advisers on the issue of race shows the flaws of McCain’s team.”

If there’s anywhere the Republican Party has failed the country, it’s in the country’s cities, McAllister told me at the Republican National Convention. “What we’re trying to do with the Hip-Hop Republicans,” he explained, “is to provide a bridge that will allow us as young, urban Republicans to interact with the urban centers that Republicans have given up on.” To solve urban problems like failing schools, Hip-Hop Republicans advocate for Republican solutions like privatization, free-market competition, and letting consumer choice. “A Hip-Hop Republican believes that competition, the prime motivator in a free market, will force change and progress,” he wrote on The Root. In the case of education reform, he wrote, “Either bad schools will improve or they will be forced to close.”

Andy Kroll is a senior at the University of Michigan and a former editorial intern at The Nation. He can be reached at andykroll@gmail.com.

Tags: activism, conservatism, Hip-Hop Republicans, race, young people, youth vote