Hoodwinked.

When I first heard the story of a white republican politrickster fooling a predominantly black district into electing him by pretending to be black I was angry. But then I realized that my anger was directed at the wrong person people.

"Dave Wilson is white. But to win a seat on the Houston Community College Board of Trustees in a district that is predominantly composed of African-American voters, Wilson, a conservative Republican, led voters to believe he was black.

According to CBS affiliate KHOU-TV, Wilson's direct mail campaign included a flier with smiling black faces he says he found on the Internet. "Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson," the accompanying text read.' [Source]


I should have been angry at the uninformed voters who elected him. If we all did our due diligence as voters and actually looked into the backgrounds of some of these people we elect to public office, maybe there wouldn't be so much dysfunction in Washington.

Of course there is another angle to this story, and it is one that I am sure that trolls everywhere will try to point out: That it shouldn't matter what color the candidate is, and if black people did not vote in such a lockstep monolithic manner, the candidate, Dave Wilson, would not have to lie about his identity.

This, of course is a myth. Black people do not vote in lockstep because of a candidates color; they vote along ideological lines. Wilson did not only lie about his race, he misrepresented his ideological affiliation.

So anyway, ask people like Michael Steele, Herman Cain, and Artur Davis. Those Negroes would not beat the whitest man in America if he ran as a democrat in a black district.

I bet the Negro who ran as a republican in Gary, Indiana against a white Democrat though that he had a shot. He did not. In Memphis, Steve Cohen, who the last time I checked is white, represented a predominantly black district in congress. And he beat a black candidate to do it. We could go on and on. O'Malley in Baltimore, Ed Rendell here in Philly, and places like New Orleans, where Harry Connick, Sr., kept getting elected as DA in that very "chocolate city" for 30 years.

The meme that black people just vote for black candidates is just wrong, but clearly Dave Wilson didn't think so, and he didn't want to take a chance.

"He also included a line on the mailer that said he was endorsed by Ron Wilson, the name of a longtime African-American state representative from Houston. The Ron Wilson mentioned on the mailer, however, is Dave Wilson’s cousin, he wrote in fine print.

“Every time a politician talks, he’s out there deceiving voters,” David Wilson told KHOU, which described him as a “gleeful political troublemaker.”

Ok, I take it all back. Maybe most of my anger should be directed at David Wilson.