For those of you that don’t know who Ted Hayes is, he is a very dedicated Black social activist and inner-city coach who happens to be a staunch Republican. He primarily works in the ghettos of the Los Angeles area and is more known for what he did in my home town of Compton, California, like:

To illustrate how easily civility can rub off on urban kids if adults take a stand, Mr. Hayes in the 1990s founded a cricket team in rundown Compton, comprised of Latino teenagers and homeless men. The team, called “Homies and Popz,” toured Ireland and England, playing at Windsor Castle, where Mr. Hayes chatted with the Earl of Wessex. Mr. Hayes’s son, Theo, a co-coach, told an interviewer that none of the cricket-playing kids has become a gang casualty. The Los Angeles Opera commissioned a 40-minute opera on the team by Michael Abels, and the Homies won two victory cups in the L.A. Social Cricket Alliance, a league dominated by Brits, Indians and other googly-bowling expats.

You would think that with charity work like the above, and with him founding the Dome Village, an outcropping of pod-like homeless shelters along the freeway in downtown Los Angeles, that people would be able to get past his political views.

Well, if you thought that, you would certainly be wrong. Ted Hayes has a letter in the Wall Street Journal detailing the prejudice he, and many other Black Republicans have received from Democrats:

Prejudice
By TED HAYES
December 28, 2005; Page A14

American blacks who are affiliated with the Republican Party are vigorously vilified by Democrats, especially black Democrats. Uncle Tom, sell-out, Oreo — the list of slurs is long.

But it is not only insults. I am the founder and director of a unique, progressive homeless facility in downtown Los Angeles, known as the Dome Village. Yet the 35 men, women and children and their pets who call the Dome Village home are being “evicted” from privately owned property after 12-and-a-half years — apparently on account of my political beliefs and activities. You see, though I am a leading homeless activist, I am also a conservative Republican and a strong supporter of President Bush.

Here’s how the situation played out. Recently, I was invited to address a local Republican Women’s Club; my landlord read an article in the local paper reporting on the event. Soon after, I received a notice raising the Dome Village rent from $2,500 a month to $18,330. Shocked, I inquired as to the seriousness of the change and the property owner blurted out that the cause of our “eviction” was “because you are Republican.” He said that as a Democrat, he was tired of helping me and the Dome Village. In other words, let the homeless be damned.

And people think the Democrats are the party of compassion and tolerance.

Private property should be protected, of course, and I have no intention of causing any trouble for this property owner as we part ways. Whatever he does with his valuable land — it is only a few blocks from the Staples Center — is no concern of mine, and I will not go to court.

Still, I cannot help but be saddened by the whole business. When I founded the Dome Village 12 years ago, we had an understanding that he could ask for his property back at any time for any reason, and I would say “absolutely” without hesitation. Still, his reason was prejudice against Republicans.

We see this across the country. Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor of Maryland and a Republican candidate for the Senate, has been crudely denigrated on racial grounds. A prominent leftist Web site, for instance, depicted him as “Sambo,” among other aspersions. When Condoleezza Rice was nominated as Secretary of State, she faced similar treatment: editorial cartoons depicting her as a racial caricature, personalities calling her “Aunt Jemima” on liberal talk radio, and so forth. Clarence Thomas, Ward Connerly, Colin Powell, Thomas Sowell and other black conservatives regularly face similar smears.

These conservatives are attacked not because of the validity or judicious consideration of their views but because those views are supposedly heterodox for American blacks. Yet it is my opinion that many black people in the U.S. are politically and philosophically conservative — and many are in fact actually closeted Republicans, fearful of persecution by friends, business associates, society clubs, school mates and even churches.

It is time for American blacks to have a conversation about the phenomenon of Democrats persecuting black Republicans. Why is this happening? What is it that the Democrats don’t want black folks to understand about Republicans? What is it that the Democrats don’t want black folks to know about Democrats? And how is it that we have come to this point — after having endured so much — where we have ourselves curtailed the freedom of political expression through the threat of retaliatory consequences?

Mr. Hayes is a homeless activist in Los Angeles.

For more on Ted Hayes, go here.