No Requiem for a Black Conservative

In a tear-jerk moment toward the end of Claude Allen's abortive Senate confirmation hearing for a spot on the federal appeals court in 2003, Sen. Orin Hatch tossed him a puffball question. Hatch asked what Allen's grandfather, who was the first in his family born out slavery, would say to him about his pending judgeship. Allen, visibly moved by the question, said that he would tell him to give back to those who he received from.

Allen's answer told much about the GOP's two-decades long court and tout of black conservatives. And that hasn't changed, even when some of them embarrass the party with their shoot-from-the-lip gaffes or fall from grace in a swirl of corruption and scandal. Allen has fit the bill on both counts. In 1982, he embarrassed the GOP with his slurs against "queers," and two decades later during his confirmation hearing he didn't back away from those comments, claiming he had simply meant "odd or unusual" people. Now Allen, President Bush's former domestic policy advisor, has been arrested on charges of stealing from department stores.

But Allen is only the latest in a string of black conservative poster boys who have been dogged by scandal. In the 1980s, Reagan's HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce was accused of corruption and influence peddling, and Clarence Pendleton, Reagan's appointee to head the U.S. Civil Rights Commission was hit with allegations of illicit business dealings. A sexual scandal embroiled Bush Sr.'s affirmative action Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas in 1991.

More