Michael Steele Suggests Racism Fuels His Critics

'Is it because a black man is chairman?'

By Nick McMaster

Posted Feb 9, 2010 5:08 PM CST

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Michael Steele Suggests Racism Fuels His Critics — Michael Steele takes questions from the audience at the John F. Kennedy School of Government on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Michael Steele suggests his race has something to do with the knocks he's taken since becoming chairman of the RNC in an interview with Washingtonian magazine. The interview isn't online yet, but Greg Sargent of Plum Line has an early peek: Steele acknowledges that he can "take things too far," but then wonders why there is so much media coverage of the internal workings of the RNC.

“I don’t see stories about the internal operations of the DNC that I see about this operation," Steele says. "Why? Is it because Michael Steele is the chairman, or is it because a black man is chairman?” Sargent notes that the comment seems at odds with Steele's previous assertions that he doesn't "play the race card."

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