The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep

Obviously no consensus to delete. However, if editors feel that the scope of the article needs to be clarified, it might be an idea to continue that discussion on the article's talk page. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 02:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of African-American Republicans[edit]

List of African-American Republicans (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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The criteria for this list is far too indiscriminate: an intersection of one of the largest ethnic groups in the US with one of the two dominant political parties in that country. (And for the first century of the Republican Party's existence, prior to the New Deal coalition, it enjoyed near-universal support from African-Americans.) I'm not aware of any other lists of people of a certain intersection of ethnic group and political party; it doesn't seem like a worthwhile list topic. Fran Rogers (talk) 05:11, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep List of Latino Republicans. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 05:50, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • That article has all the same problems; I'd advocate deleting it for the same reason. Fran Rogers (talk) 07:08, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • This feels like a slippery slope. However, I do understand your argument. I don't personally see a good reason to delete here. Difficulty maintaining an article isn't reason enough to delete, and as long as the list incorporates only persons who are verifiable Republicans it seems to me a worthwhile topic. I'd personally prefer it to be a list of exclusively -politicians- who are African-American and Republican (ie card-carrying party members, current and former), which would make everything indisputably discriminate, but this seems to me to be a useful list from a scholarly standpoint and one which while difficult to maintain isn't fundamentally flawed. Wikipedia rightly notes as fact far less immediately/easily verifiable things than one's membership in a political party. I'll keep my keep vote. Interested to see how others fall on this -- this has more grey area than most AfDs so...interesting! :) ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 07:40, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Neutral for now, but this article concerns me. Am I to understand it's a list of every Republican party member of African descent? Certainly it's limited to those that hold office. I would assume that the basic limit is to those that hold government office, but that's not clear in the article.

In addition, there are plenty of South African whites, or North Africans that are not considered "black" for most purposes, that hold offices in the U.S. This list would need to be substantially tightened up, and I think that whatever the style guide about "African American" versus "Black" or whatever other nomenclature is preferred, is secondary to the title of this article which I would assume doesn't include, for instance, South African immigrants to the U.S. Shadowjams (talk) 08:09, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that is a significant concern with respect to this article. The term African-American is normally applied in the United States to persons descended from black Africans, and only rarely applied to persons descended from non-black North Africans or from white South Africans. Furthermore, relatively few American politicians are of North African descent or of white South African descent, as far as I am aware. There are other issues with this article, but I don't think that defining who counts as "African-American" is the problem here. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 14:38, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I realize it's a common term of art in the U.S., and I didn't mean to try and start a debate about the term either, but I am a little concerned someone from outside the U.S. might be confused. However since by definition almost all will be Americans (since belonging to a party in which you cannot vote would be a small minority of members), I'm less concerned in this case. Shadowjams (talk) 10:16, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep but Edit The list would be efficient as a list of prominent African-American Republican politicians; the inclusion of sports and entertainment stars is irrelevant unless they are also politically active. Warrah (talk) 20:05, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• I wouldn't have a problem with a list limited to politicians, which would be slightly larger than those that hold government offices (for instance, Michael Steele is the paradigmatic example). Shadowjams (talk) 10:17, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Very interesting + Avoid a rush to judgment. I've enjoyed reading the discussions above. Will think some more before casting a definite vote one way or the other. Rammer (talk) 04:41, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep but clarify scope to Republican Politicians as Warrah above - this was my thought as to what the article actually was supposed to refer to (i.e. abbreviate "repulbican politician to republican"). Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:33, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.