Welcome to my inbox:
“You should be shot dead by a cop.”
“Where’s a racist cop when you need one?”
And those are just the messages that don’t call me “Uncle Tom” and “house n****r.” Yes, the n-word with a hard “r.”
My name is Jon Miller, and I am a black conservative who voted for President Trump. I’m also a White House correspondent for CRTV, a digital video platform that airs right-of-center views in a media landscape that often discounts people like me because of my views.
“Civility” is a prevalent topic in today’s dialogue, but there seems to be a sense that a lack of it is a problem that only exists on the right. I’m here to tell you: my inbox is proof to the contrary.
Incivility is abundant on the Left and, in fact, flat-out racism is, too. If you are a black Trump supporter, you know exactly what I mean. And, unfortunately, it’s no longer just faceless internet trolls. Now, when Kanye West meets with Trump, mainstream cable news panelists say he’s “what happens when negroes don’t read.”
Is 2018 really the year we make calling black people “negro” great again?
The invective I receive often comes from people who claim to fight for social justice and against racism. It’s so hypocritical, it’s laughable. And so that’s what I usually do: laugh.
But tell any other group in America to laugh off racial abuse, and the double standard is clear.
We’re told it’s acceptable because black conservatives are race traitors trying to be in master’s good graces. If we wanted to be in the good graces of elites, being conservative would be the worst way to do it.
When an editor of the New York Times made an announcement that the paper would like to hear from “readers of color about their own experiences with having political views that don’t align with what their community expects,” I responded with my story.
Of course, once they received an actual submission, they promptly rejected it. I suggested maybe we can find common ground on not calling black Trump supporters “negroes” but apparently, we can’t.
Still, with hostility at a fever pitch, I think it would have benefited their readers to get to know at least one of those strange black “deplorables.”
I grew up in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, and despite the liberal culture, my household wasn’t very political. If anything, it was a musical household.
My dad is a jazz bassist who came from humble beginnings in Jamaica, Queens, and with just a high school education, worked his way up to become a Grammy Award-winning artist and business owner. He worked hard for what he achieved and instilled the same work ethic in his children.
My mother is a Wellesley graduate who raised four kids and taught us the importance of independent thinking, education, faith and grit. She taught us to always give 110 percent and not rely on anyone to hand you anything. I guess that all translated into conservatism for me.
When I went off to college at the flamingly liberal Columbia University, my dad said, “Son, you’re either gonna come out a liberal like everyone else or go completely in the other direction and become a raging conservative.”
By the end of my junior year, I was a part-time assistant for Glenn Beck at Fox News and had quit the College Republicans because they were too liberal. You can tell how that went.
Outside of class, I read texts that would give a liberal college professor a stroke: Whittaker Chambers, Friedrich Hayek, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, Clinton Rossiter and Edmund Burke.
Despite what radical professors like Rashid Khalidi taught in my classes, I discovered that America was the most unique country in the world because it was based on the Founders’ simple idea that man deserves to be free.
It’s in that country that I’ve heard liberals demand that I stop calling myself a journalist when I’m open about my support for the president they despise. One word: No. My viewers trust me because they never have to guess where I’m coming from. It’s not bias that they reject; it’s the pretense of objectivity.
That thirst for transparency is what the coastal elites missed in 2016. Millions of Americans tune in to see my “White House Brief” on Facebook—mostly, I’d imagine, because they share my beliefs. But I also want to engage with those who don’t.
I am absolutely a conservative and support many of the president’s policies. I refuse to pretend otherwise. And with that understanding, I hope to have more meaningful conversations with people who disagree.
Maybe that will help turn down the heat in this country, but pretending that extremism only exists on one side surely will not.
Jon Miller is CRTV’s White House correspondent and host of “White House Brief.” He previously worked for Fox News, The Blaze and Mercury Radio Arts. Follow him on Twitter @millerstream.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.