the minaret

It all started with a Tweet from Aiken: “Playing drinking game with my brother now. We drink every time we see a black person on screen at the RNC. #soberasamormon,” to which John Rich, half of country’s popular duo Big & Rich, took offense. Rich tweeted, “@clayaiken…CLAY! You should be ashamed for racist comments like THAT! WOW,” followed by, “I wonder how long it will be till @clayaiken takes that idiotic post down. Clay, you’re better than that…I hope. Sincerely, JR,” and finally, “And to finish it off, @clayaiken hashtags soberasamormon? I thought your charity was for inclusion, not EXCLUSION. What happened?” This last tweet was in reference to Aiken’s Celebrity Apprentice run, on which he was competing for his charity, the National Inclusion Project. According to The Huffington Post, Aiken and Rich were acquainted during production of the show, where Rich, the 2011 winner, interviewed the final few contestants of this season.

The game of “negrospotting”—trying to find black people in the audience at the RNC –had been a phrase trending on Twitter before Aiken’s comment. The game was spawned by black comedian and author Baratunde Thurston, who began using this term in his Tweets at the start of the convention. Rich did not directly attack Thurston for his “racist” comments, but shortly after attacking the former American Idol star, he Tweeted, “Between the hashtag “negrospotting” and what I’ve read ever since, I’ve just had enough of this racist nonsense. It’s sick. PLS STOP.”

“Negrospotting” gained popularity from a simple, demographical fact: According to the Frederick Douglass Foundation, only two percent of the RNC’s delegates for 2012 were black. From there, the game became about math, since the ratio of black people to white people on the convention floor was roughly one in 50. Simply stated, finding a black person in the crowd of Republicans during the RNC was like finding a needle in a very white haystack.

The “race card” should be pulled on the GOP for having a low percentage of black delegates instead of on the Liberals who had a good laugh playing not-really-drinking games at the party’s expense. According to nationalreview.com, it is statistically less likely for an African-American to identify with the Republican Party. Black voters are the Democratic Party’s strongest voting bloc and have been for 50 years. With the Democrats holding a historical record of clinching almost 90 percent of the black population’s vote over multiple elections, the Republicans have a hard time finding any black delegates—it’s statistically improbable.

The “negrospotting” Twitter trend and Aiken’s Tweet are relatively good-natured jabs at the Republican Party for being at a mathematical disadvantage in regards to diversity. According to The Washington Post, white people account for about 92 percent of Republicans. Numbers like that are the kinds of things John Stewart and Stephen Colbert often poke fun at; it’s not new information. Aiken, Thurston, and the other participants in the “negrospotting” Twitter game weren’t being racist—they were using statistics to point out how white-washed the 2012 RNC floor was.