TMR's Year In Review: The "Race" To The Bottom Began

I could belabor the point, as I have for the last few months, but shamefully to me - especially as a black Republican - 2013 was the year the Right lost on the subject of race. Barack Obama may have been the target, but a dehumanized Trayvon Martin caught the bullet, and the Tea Party's whooping and hollering was enough to make almost any black person (or person of conscience) recoil in disgust.

That was it - the Tea Party was done. Unwilling to silence our worst actors, there wasn't a single thing the Right could say to advance our arguments on any subject, much less race. And you want to know what the further tragedy was?

The Right started the year with the upper hand.

The media had blown their Trayvon/Zimmerman reporting, in such an obvious way, it would've been easy to swing blacks around for the Left's crime of wildly exploiting the case - all it took was a little compassion.

But no. The Right, being insecure about any effect the Left's media manipulations have, decided not to speak truth to power - but to go after the low-hanging fruit of an, obviously grieving, black community. Blacks weren't being media savvy enough. And one group's wrong was just as politically opportune as anybody else's (AKA the liberal media's) right?

Conservatives couldn't have been more wrong - I'm talking Westboro Baptist Church wrong - and the Right either (take your pick) couldn't see it, couldn't admit it, or - the worst of the worst during, what was obviously, a mourning period for blacks - just didn't give a damn. I've told you:

Appearances are just one of the problems with groupthink.

It appears the Right has been in full-on "Race Hustler" mode for too long. By attacking Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in this way, they'd gotten so used to it, they thought it would work in any situation - even the unnecessary death of a teenager.

That led to such unfortunate comparisons as The Black Panthers - who fought racists - being compared as equal in evil as the Ku Klux Klan, who perpetuated it. It simply won't wash historically, but then, whites also denying the context of our lives became a HUGE problem.

One that, luckily enough, the movie 12 Years a Slave seems to have remedied somewhat.

Yes, attacking the media, exclusively, would've won the day - and probably turned many of the issues requiring a vote or consensus to conservative's advantage. Impossible once the racial tit-for-tat started:

But then, here, I should only speak for myself,…