What in the “Idiocracy” is going on? The most trending topic from the day one kickoff of the Republican National Convention was not the appearance of their fearless Führer or their party platform to make America America again. No, it was the speech given by Amber Rose, a Z-lister “celebrity” and “influencer” best known for her relationships with various brothers in the hip-hop game and rise to “notoriety” within Black circles.
In other words, she’s “Black famous.”
But that was before she dropped some bars in Milwaukee at the GOP confab.
Rose’s RNC Comments
Most notably, Rose, again, is someone whose entire “celebrity” was/is tied to her penchant for and proximity to Black culture – though in recent years, and only in recent years, has she made crystal clear that though appearing racially ambiguous, she is anything but Black – said this:
“I realized Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re Black, white, straight or gay, it’s all love. And that’s when it hit me: these are my people. This is where I belong,” said Rose, during her recent RNC speech.
Wait. What?
“These (MAGA) are my people? This is where I belong?”
Maybe Rose garnered cheers and applause from conservatives at the RNC because her words gave off “Prodigal son/daughter” returning home vibes. Here’s this person maybe three people in the entire RNC knew before her speech, someone introduced to the audience as famous and as an influencer, coming out and saying to the world, “I’m home in whiteness. I’ve been living sinfully in a far-off land (Black culture) for too long, squandering my father’s money (white privilege) and lying with animals. But I’m home now. These are my people. This is where I belong.”
Giving the GOP a Pass
Or maybe those Republican attendees offered up shouts of joy at Rose’s words because she gave them the same thing poster-boy Black Republicans (Byron, Tim, Wesley, Clarence, etc.) give them – freedom from white guilt and a total pass on their overt support of racist laws, policies and actions.
Surely, someone sees the irony in Rose giving the GOP a pass when she grew her fame passing as Black, i.e. claiming a multi-racial heritage which she now vehemently denies.
I mean, how can racists be racist if Amber Rose, a celebrity influencer no less, just said, “Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re Black, white, straight or gay; it’s all love”?
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What Rose May Have Missed During MAGA Orientation
How? Either Black people and Black history in this Babylon, and our lived realities and evidential research numbers and mother wit and ancestral whispers and Emmit Till mutilations and Devil’s Punchbowl atrocities and Ida B. Wells’ documented lynching horror stories are all wrong, fake, and non-existent, or Rose missed a thing or three.
Like Republican Rep. Tim Burchett, who immediately after the shooting at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally, blamed a woman on Trump’s Secret Service duty for the shooting, and more specifically, blamed DEI (as in her employment was a DEI hire) for the shooting.
But to be fair, Rose didn’t say the GOP had any love or respect for women… just those who are “Black, white, straight or gay.”
So, she must not have known that last year, seven Republican attorneys general wrote to Target saying their Pride Month campaigns could violate state laws. Or that Republican former Trump administration official Seb Gorka described Vice President Kamala Harris as a DEI hire while saying, “She’s a woman, she’s colored,” as a vehicle to demean the VP.
Maybe Rose gave Gorka and the GOP a pass because they don’t recognize Harris as a sister. But what about the fact that since 2018, Republican lawmakers across the country exponentially ramped up their voter suppression efforts by closing polling places in Black communities by the thousands and purging hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of registered Black voters from voter rolls? They’ve also outlawed efforts proven to increase voter participation, especially Black and Brown voter turnout, via hundreds of state laws under the guise of “voter protection” and “election integrity.”
Maybe Rose had a hectic influencer schedule during the first month of 2021, when Republicans responded to Donald Trump’s call for an entire treasonous insurrection (Jan. 6, 2021) that had at its core the belief that registered Black voters who cast their ballots during the 2020 Presidential Election (specifically in Detroit, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philly… all with super Black populations) were illegitimate and illegal, and thus, their votes should be thrown out because they weren’t/aren’t real Americans.
That doesn’t seem all that accepting of Blackfolk. I fail to see the love.
And while president, Trump attacked peaceful protesters seeking criminal justice and voting rights reforms, calling them “thugs,” “criminals” and “vermin” who he asked advisors if he could simply order police to go in and shoot them down. Again, not much love. But Trump time and again showed an over-abundance of love for violent white nationalists heralding them as heroes and “very good people.”
He did so with the white domestic terrorists who killed a woman in Charlottesville, NC, and injured countless others; and with then 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who traveled across state lines illegally wielding a weapon of mass destruction (AR-15-style rifle) and shot three men, killing two of them and wounding the third, during a protest against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin; and most recently claiming that convicted killer Daniel Perry who, in Perry’s own words, drove to a police brutality protest in Austin to do harm (which he did; killing a U.S. military vet), was a patriot who was wrongly persecuted by a “woke” DA.
There’s the GOP-led countrywide assault on and banning of Black history, Black books, Black thought, DEI and CRT, which isn’t even taught in K-college classrooms, beyond the handful of law schools that wrestle with the important topic.
And let’s not forget the current North Carolina GOP candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, who said during a church service that “Some folk need killing.”
That’s not giving off “It’s all love” vibes.
To be fair, Robinson said it was only the “evil” people who threaten American Christianity who need to be forcefully un-alived. But if you’ve heard any speech made by Bruh Robinson, he’s mentioned more times than Trump has felony convictions that Blacks, LGBTQ-plus folk, and anyone who doesn’t worship white nationalist Jesus are those “evil” people.
Wait, There’s More?
There is no shortage of additional GOP examples of things Rose apparently missed while she was pledging Mu Alpha Gamma Alpha (MAGA). Former Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron refusing to hold Breonna Taylor’s killer accountable. The whole-ass Muslim ban. Locking up children of asylum seekers in cages (most of whom have never been reunited with their families). Calls for religious freedoms, but only for Christians. And so much more.
It’s almost as if there’s no way Rose could have overlooked all these things. Could it be possible she’s pimping the MAGA culture for fame and fortune?
But that can’t be. Can it? She would need some history, some experience fleecing an entire people for personal gain.
Joy-Ann Reid, what are your thoughts?
“It’s ironic that [Republicans] were able to recruit this young woman. She’s racially ambiguous. I don’t wanna say she’s Black because she has said she’s not, so I don’t wanna say this ‘Black woman,’” Reid said, referring to Rose calling herself as mixed race over the years. “This woman who is of whatever race that she has claimed, she’s said she’s not Black. But [the RNC]brought somebody whose whole career is based in Black culture. She used to be on a show on BET. That’s the reason most people know who she is. She dated one of the most prominent African American rappers in the business, in the history of hip-hop. So, her whole culture [or celebrity]came from Black culture, even though she says she’s not a Black person herself.”
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