The RNC invested three months and $10 million after the 2012 election to talk to more than 35,000 people in order to find out how the Republican Party can better relate to minorities.
But the GOP could have saved themselves all that cash by just spending five minutes with Atlanta rapper Killer Mike. In an interview with Hip Hop DX, Killer raises a critical point about the African-American community’s relationship with Obama and the Democratic Party at large:
But for the most part, black people, before they wake up in the morning, before they eat their cereal or drink their coffee, they know they’re gonna vote Democrat. And they should demand something back. You deserve some reciprocity for loyalty given to this party for the last 50 years. You deserve more than pictures of Robert Kennedy and Dr. King on your wall. You deserve more than the feeling of feeling good because someone of your color is in office. You deserve something for that. So the bigger question, that I can firmly give an answer to, is that I think it’s time for the Democratic Party to give us something or for us to leave the Democratic Party.
African-American unemployment has been a festering sore on the Obama presidency. Obama has come under heavy criticism for the disparity between unemployment figures between black and white America.
BET founder Bob Johnson cracked back on Obama, for example.
"This country would never tolerate white unemployment at 14 and 15 percent. No one would ever stay in office at 14 or 15 percent unemployment in this nation, but we’ve had that double unemployment for over 50 years," said Johnson in March.
In his interview, Killer Mike also dropped some knowledge on how Republicans might successfully reach out to African-American communities:
You have Shelley Wynter and Killer Mike in Atlanta, [and] I would bring on some other people. I’d bring on Democrats. I’d bring on Derrick Boazman, and I’d bring on some other people. What I would do, I’d give those men the millions you’re going to send to market, and I’d go to barbershops. I’d listen to what the concerns of black men are. I would have that panel of people go and take a census to barbershops. Then I would take those barbershops, much like the one I own, and I would take the findings, and try to find a strategic plan, that immediately injected money into the African American community to make the men in that community business owners. Meaning, men that were getting out [of jail] for non-violent drug offenses that would be willing to go back, get certain degrees, or certain trades. I would give incentives for hiring black plumbers or black business. I would also start to do small loans, where young men who have the ability to own small stores or bodegas, would then become the owners of that. If you don’t own nothing in your community, you don’t own your community. Essentially, Republicans, I would put that money in the hands of black Republicans, who are not like the black Democratic servants that are now in our community and taking the money god knows where. I would make sure black men’s unemployment would start lowering, jobs are increasing, and I’d make it very public that we are doing this. I would also tell black men, "We know you’re living in a dangerous environment. And we’re willing, as the Republicans and the NRA, to back you all having firearms, with proper training and whatever else is needed. We’re willing to help you get your records expunged for that bullshit weed charge you got." I would make a vested interest in the black community if I were a Republican. I would focus on stressing that Fredrick Douglass was a Republican. And I would try to be a lot more Fredrick Douglass-like, and lot less Bush-like in my policy.
Killer Mike and Mitt Romney agree: assist small business and put communities back into the hands of the people who live there.