While such news has received scant attention, the reality is that the Republican primary race for Florida is downright acrimonious and getting meaner by the minute. Ardent Donald Trump supporter and current front-runner, Byron Donalds, who has received the president’s endorsement, is encountering vehemently fierce levels of hostility from fellow nominees desperate to promote and distinguish themselves and prove their political credibility in an effort to topple Donalds. Such determination has resulted in heavy eyebrow raising from rival Republican candidate James Fishback, who has referred to Donalds as a “slave.”

NBC news reported on Fishback’s connections to allies of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis coupled with his inflammatory statements, including his claim that Donalds is a “slave” to “corporate interests” and “tech bros.” Recently, Fishback engaged in more aggressive antics, hurling racist invective, informing Florida politics that Donalds “has no right to complain” and shouldn’t be upset by such racially charged comments because of the fact that his (Donalds) ancestors were not subjected to slavery in America. Notably, his quote invoked themes popularized by Black conservatives in the “American Descendants of Slaves” movement, who’ve sought to drive a wedge among Black people by differentiating those with recent immigrant histories from those without such histories, as well as among White conservatives, such as Ann Coulter, who have made similar claims.

As many astute political observers know, Donalds is one of few Black Republicans in Congress. He’s often taken great and, in fact, perverse pains to minimize racism in American society - last year, he disingenuously diminished, whitewashed, and disturbingly embraced the Jim Crow era as a period “where Black families were fully intact” and voted conservatively. Mind you, this was an era where most Black people were deprived of the right to vote and were legally discriminated against; lynched; forced to endure oppressive sharecropping systems in the south; and subjected to numerous indignities, injustices, and impositions from such a morally and psychologically rapacious system. Indeed, Jim Crow was a dehumanizing entity of systemic and systematic racism on political steroids. As can be imagined, he was called out and challenged by numerous Black pundits, columnists, and politicians such as former MSNBC commentator Joy Reid, Hakeem Jeffries, and me.

Interestingly, and perhaps karmic, is Donalds’s enduring identical, searing racist invective that he engineered toward former Vice President Kamala Harris during her presidential campaign. This was when a large segment of the conservative right, with the blessings of Trump, ignited false and baseless misinformation claiming that Harris wasn’t really Black but was biracial because of her Indian lineage. Donalds largely minimized such behavior by latching on to such despicable and sinister invective and questioning Harris’s Blackness. Karma can be menacing.

Donalds isn’t the only conservative of color who is facing augmented resistance from the conservative right. At Turning Point USA’s flagship event late last month, Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy denounced racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and xenophobia deeply festering within the MAGA movement and the larger conservative right. Ramaswamy condemned the notion of “Heritage American.” Heritage Americanism is the nationalist belief that those with Anglo-Protestant ancestry are more American than the children of recent immigrants.

Ramaswamy’s attacks on the more rabid forces infecting the MAGA movement appear to be a massive 180-degree turn as opposed to how he addressed duplicative bigotry during his less-than-stellar 2024 presidential campaign.

He further agreed with the philosophy that racism is “emergent in certain corridors of the online right,” presented in The New York Times. What is notable is that Ramaswamy was deafeningly silent when Trump and numerous segments of the political and cultural right attacked Haitian immigrants and Venezuelan refugees. In fact, during his dismal presidential campaign, Ramaswamy adamantly vouched for draconian immigration policies, among them the deportation of American-born children of undocumented immigrants. While he has made some miniature overtures such as denouncing far-right activist and White supremacist Nick Fuentes (hardly demonstrates any significant degree of courage), the reality is that he is either reluctant or refuses to take a full-throttle stance and call out racism for what it really is. It is a sad commentary for sure.

There are others. Remember Rob Smith, a gay and Black conservative who adopted a “hear no evil, fear no evil, see no evil” stance and made a name for himself attacking fellow Black people whenever he had the opportunity to do so? Many of us saw the video where he was heckled and verbally pelted with racist, homophobic slurs while attending a Republicans for National Renewal (a conservative advocacy and MAGA group) event.

He said the group hurled racist and homophobic slurs at him, and he told CNN he was a victim of a hate crime. Smith shared a video on social media in December showing him at an event in Phoenix as he commented being “confronted and surrounded by White Supremacists that don’t like gays or blacks in the Republican Party.” He recounted that the experience resulted in his feeling “exposed” and that he had no intention of attending similar events in the future. The harrowing incident prompted him to leave the Republican Party, declaring that he was “betrayed” by MAGA , and gay and Black people saw what they really thought of him: “The reason I don’t identify as MAGA anymore, I don’t identify as Republican, I don’t identity as any of this stuff is because I saw just what the ‘MAGA movement’ really thought of me.” Really? Please! Call me cynical, but I am hardly convinced that Smith was that racially naïve. Rather, he engaged in opportunistic politics and eventually got burned. As is the case with his fellow conservative-of-color brethren, Smith still touts right-wing commentary and liberal and progressive issues and causes whenever he has the opportunity to do so.

Let’s not forget the lesser-known Hodge twins, two Black conservative podcasters. They, like Smith, revel in attacking fellow Black people being rejected by White supremacists who told them that they were not welcome to live in the all-White Arkansas community despite supposedly “being loved” by the supposed White people who rejected them, informing them that the community was restricted solely as President Eric Orwoll informed them in no uncertain terms. Interestingly, this supposed patron saint of White family values previously made live-streamed porn videos with his wife for cash and distribution - go figure. And we shouldn’t forget businessman and blatant misogynist Myron Gaines, a Black Muslim and host of the Fresh and Fit podcast who was publicly humiliated and embarrassed by Turning Point staff who outright refused and blocked him from entering the event. There are others who have run into roadblocks as well.

In fact, it appears that Candace Owens is one of the few far-right Black conservatives who has managed to maintain devoted support from the extreme right. She has her detractors in the movement, yet she has steadfastly managed to successfully challenge them and maintain a significant degree of prominence within the conservative right movement.

The major issue with many non-White conservatives, in addition to their intellectual dishonesty, is their frantic attempt to convince White people who are indisputably racially bigoted that they are not racist. We can include right-wing pundits Star Parker, Jason Whitlock, Owens, Michelle Malkin, Dinesh D’Souza, Shelby Steele, Nikki Haley, Doreen Borelli in this group, along with the aforementioned individuals. In essence, they provide cover for and espouse largely offensive commentary that many right-wing White conservatives do not dare to say in public. In other words, they tell racists what they want to hear as opposed to what they need to hear.

This is not to say all Black or other non-White conservatives demonize other Black people for profit. Republican strategist Raynard Jackson, journalist Tony Brown, and the late Colin Powell are examples of individuals who reside/d on the political right of the spectrum yet had no problem calling out what they saw as the shortcomings of the conservative movement regarding its disconnect with large segments of the Black electorate. The truth is that racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other social ills do indeed exist in America and in all nations. Most sane, rational, and honest Americans know this, regardless of their race or ethnic backgrounds.

Such indisputable realities are evident in our health, educational, environmental, judicial, and political systems. There is far too much concrete evidence to indicate otherwise. The blood and soil politics and rhetoric that have deeply infested, taken over and seized the current conservative right is one that is morally sinister, draconian, degenerate and morally abominable. Deep down, despite adamant denials, more than likely these non-white conservatives (and their White conservative cohorts) know this to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.