title:  Black GOP Candidate: Party Bosses Told Me ‘You Sound Too Black’
text: Former Republican Party chairman and U.S. Senate candidate Michael Steele, who is black, has made some interesting revelations about what it s like to be a black Republican running for office. Steele spoke to The Huffington Post for their series  Candidate Confessional,  where past candidates reveal the inner workings of their campaigns.Steele notes that while he was the party chairman the RNC took back the house in 2010, but a series of controversies ensured that he would not be re-elected to the position, now held by Reince Priebus who remains party chairman even after the RNC lost in a major way against President Obama in 2012. During his time at the RNC, Steele says members of the committee told him  You sound too black. Steele also explains that it was a  problem  for members of the party that his chief of staff was black. I had a black chief of staff and everyone threw a hissy fit, didn t know how to deal with the brother,  Steele said.  I m like,  Dude, he s a political operative like everybody else. He s a chief of staff. Just deal with him.  But that was a problem. In 2006, Steele attempted to run for Senate in Maryland, eventually losing by 10% to now-Senator Ben Cardin. In that run, Steele was picked to be pushed by the party because he was a black candidate in a state with a large black population. But they had problems finding black staffers for his campaign.Steele, for example, said he knew there d be questions about why there weren t any African Americans on his campaign staff. The reason was easy to explain. The [Republican] party s never taken the time to actually groom blacks to be political operatives, to be campaign managers, political directors, communication directors, finance directors,  Steele said.  So when I have to go as a candidate into a statewide campaign, or even if I m running for local sheriff, what pool of talent am I gonna pull from? I m gonna pull from the established talent that has been developed by the white infrastructure, which is largely white males. In the almost post-Obama era, Steele s revelations almost feel quaint. After the post-2012 election that warned the GOP that they need to appeal to minority voters in order to be a viable presidential party, the GOP has gone even more anti-minority, expressed in the campaign of current Republican front runner Donald Trump, who has egged his supporters on to beat up black protesters while himself smearing the  Black Lives Matter  movement. Featured image from Wikimedia Commons