February is Black History Month, the yearly calling of attention to the contributions blacks have made to American history: Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Richard Pryor.

And though I seem to recall past Black History months getting a little more than a faint nod from the general public, two events at the beginning of the year bring the accomplishments of blacks into sharper focus: the inauguration of Barack Obama and the election of Maryland’s Lt. Gov. Michael Steele to head the Republican National Committee.

One of these events is monumental. Obama’s campaign was refreshingly race-less; the goal wasn’t to become the first black president. His election is important because it represents a rejuvenation of interest in politics and a 21st-century approach to campaigning and party politics.

Steele represents nothing comparable, for politics, the GOP or the black population. The RNC’s election of Steele to head the party instead serves to highlight the archaic traditions of the right. Worse, the lack of any real change in policy reduces to a rhetorical device the potential significance of the first black heading the Republican Party.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s nomination illustrated the same issue. It was visible as a pandering to try to capture nomadic Hillary Clinton supporters, among other things. Palin and Steele are the Republican Party’s Bizarro versions of its opposition; superficially similar, ideologically opposite.

One of Steele’s primary opponents in the race to head the corpse of the GOP, Chip Saltzman, illustrated this split with a holiday gaffe. He felt compelled to issue a 41-track mix CD of conservative satire songs, anti-liberal parodies set to woefully hackneyed melodies. Among them was a song called “Barack the Magic Negro,” already a hit on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.

Republican Ken Blackwell, also a candidate to head the RNC and also black, stepped quickly to Saltzman’s defense. In attributing the hullabaloo surrounding this forehead-slapping faux pas to “hypersensitivity in the press to matters of race,” Blackwell maintains the GOP spirit of missing the point.

I pity the GOP, honestly I do. I can imagine huge meetings at cartoonishly large conference tables, attendant nurses tending to brooding sagging white men in identical suits trying to figure out what would draw people back into the Republican fold, and opting for nothing deeper than a woman and a minority.

Minorities, women and young people have been left out in the cold by conservative policy, which has traditionally ignored issues of civil rights while pushing for corporate welfare. Policy that seeks to restrict a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, marry another woman or earn a comparable salary. I hope the RNC will take a long-overdue, introspective look at these issues. The question should no longer be “how can we advertise our product?” but “how can we make our product relevant?”

Obama’s inauguration will be among the centerpieces of future generations’ Black History months. Future American History curricula will regard the election as a momentous occasion indicative of a sea change in American politics, for good or ill. If the GOP doesn’t get to work evaluating itself with some degree of reality – really considering what they stand for in an abstract and fundamental way, then the party’s death throes have already begun and Steele’s performance – with “shout-outs” and quotes from Kool Moe Dee – will seem like an oblivious minstrel show.

Cody Bishop can be reached at [email protected]