The isolation of being African-American and Republican rang clear to Sam Bain when he joined a group of about 100 other sign-waving protesters at a 2010 speech by President Barack Obama at Ohio State University.

“I was called a sellout, a racist, and one person even came right up to me and called me a house Negro. And they were black people. I was being attacked for being a black Republican,” he said.

But Bain stood his ground.

“It didn’t faze me,” said the 23-year-old senior at Wright State University in Ohio. “I’m not one to follow the herd. I’m not going to vote for a man just because he is black. I don’t agree with Obama’s policies. I judge a man by his policies and the content of his character, not the color of his skin. That’s what Martin Luther King Jr. would say.”

---

“So if you are a young, black Republican, you are totally and completely eccentric,” said David A. Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C.

“The base of the Republican Party is Southern, white and conservative,” he said. “I suppose it is a kind of rebellion.”

“They (black Republicans) certainly are individuals, because among black people, they are not the norm,” he said. “They are way out on the tail.”

Read more at the Kansas City Star.