Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, recently went on Chris Matthews' MSNBC show and chatted, among other things, about the lack of blacks in the Republican Party.
"We could have used a few more brothers in the house; there's no doubt about that," Steele said when Matthews made the ingenious and original observation that there aren't too many blacks hanging around at Republican conventions (does Steele not think some sisters would have been nice, too?). And despite his gaffe-tastic mess of a term as chairman, Steele said he's proud of helping to diversify a party that's not known for it's diversity. "What I tried to do [as chairman] was to broaden the landscape over which we could play, go into neighborhoods where we needed to be in but hadn't been in generations, and I think it made a difference," he said.
Did it? Well, we have two black GOP congressmen this year that we didn't have before. But there's a lot more work to do on the GOP side if they really want to bring more black voters into their ranks.
Read more at Black Voices.
In other news: Sasha Obama and Hu Jintao Talk a Little Chinese.
Lauren is a former Deputy Editor of The Root.