Two weeks ago, MSNBC president Phil Griffin apologized to Reince Priebus, head of the Republican National Committee, for a tweet sent out by the network’s official Twitter account.
The offending tweet read: “Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family.”
The tweet referred to a recent Cheerios television commercial featuring a young biracial child, her white mother and her black father.
Prominent Republicans around the country reacted swiftly to the tweet, expressing outrage that MSNBC would accuse them of racism or intolerance. MSNBC swiftly and repeatedly apologized for the tweet, calling it “offensive.”
Despite Republican outrage about MSNBC’s tweet, the reaction of conservatives nationwide to another commercial just a few days later calls into question their assertion of complete racial tolerance.
During the Super Bowl, Coca-Cola aired a now-infamous ad depicting Americans of several different racial and ethnic backgrounds singing sections of “America the Beautiful” in their respective native languages.
According to a statement from Coca-Cola, the ad was intended to “provide a snapshot of the real lives of Americans representing diverse ethnicities, religions, races and families, all found in the United States.”
In response to this fairly innocuous celebration of America’s diversity, many notable conservatives expressed outrage at the idea of a traditional American song sung in any language besides English.
Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) called the ad “disturbing” in a Facebook post and said the commercial’s celebration of multiculturalism means that America is “on the road to perdition.”
Popular right-wing news aggregator The Right Scoop claimed that “America has a culture of its own, primarily denoted by our official language, English.”
America, of course, does not have an official language. However, conservatives in Congress have previously supported bills that would make English the official language of the United States government.
Fox News pundit Todd Starnes tweeted his opinion that the meaning of the commercial is that Coca-Cola feels “America is beautiful because new immigrants don’t learn to speak English.” He also called Coca-Cola “the official soft drink of illegals crossing the border.”
Eric Bolling, another Fox News contributor and co-host of Fox’s “The Five,” claimed that the ad’s use of “America the Beautiful” “ticked off a lot of Americans” who are “very, very patriotic about that song.”
These comments by prominent conservative leaders are mean-spirited, vile and offensive to all those who celebrate and appreciate the diversity of America. They also prove the point MSNBC sought to make in its tweet about the Cheerios ad: Many right-wing conservatives are deeply intolerant of nonwhite, non-English speaking Americans.
The intolerance of conservative leaders toward America’s nonwhite population has translated into a collapse of support for the Republican Party among racial minorities in the United States.
In the 2012 presidential election, 93 percent of blacks, 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians voted for President Barack Obama. Republican nominee Gov. Mitt Romney received 59 percent of the white vote, but that strong majority was no match for the president’s diverse, multiracial coalition.
Recent studies suggest that the Republican Party’s diversity problem is only getting worse. A 2013 Gallup survey found that non-Hispanic whites account for 89 percent of the Republican Party, with about 8 percent identifying as black or Hispanic. In contrast, 35 percent of Democrats identified as black or Hispanic.
The Republican Party and the American conservative movement will ultimately crumble without at least moderate levels of support from racial and ethnic minorities.
Rather than condemning these groups, conservatives should celebrate and reach out to them.
Diversity, not racial intolerance and hatred, is what truly makes America beautiful.
[Elliot Levy is a UF political science and public relations junior. His columns usually appear on Wednesdays. A version of this column ran on page 7 on 2/14/2014 under the headline "Reaction to Coke ad reveals conservative intolerance"]
