It is a compelling cover photo, filled with attractive, well-heeled young conservatives celebrating Donald Trump’s return to power. The accompanying article in New York is titled “The Cruel Kids’ Table,” and the picture provides seemingly devastating proof of the author’s contention that “almost everyone” at the gala was white.
Race comes up again when “an older woman in an updo and a silver sequined gown” approaches writer Brock Colyar and asks: “‘Have you noticed the entire room is white?’ Colyar writes, “It wasn’t entirely clear whether she thought that was a good thing or a bad thing.”
But a wider view of that cover photo, which appears within the magazine, alongside the article, shows at least three Black attendees had been cropped out, including the party’s host, CJ Pearson, co-chair of the GOP Youth Advisory Council.
“This is insane,” Pearson wrote. “I hosted this event and @NYMag intentionally left me out of their story because it would have undermined their narrative that MAGA is some racist cult. They also didn’t include the fact that @WakaFlocka and @Gervontaa were also there.”
“You don’t hate the liberal media enough,” he concluded.
Colyar’s article focuses on “the cultural ascendancy of the New Young Right … the gleeful, confident and casually cruel Trumpers who, after conquering Washington, have their sights set on the rest of America.”
The conservative backlash has been swift and severe, forcing Colyar to make their X account private. Neither Colyar nor New York Magazine has responded to the uproar.
To conservatives, it’s a familiar narrative. Since 1964, when Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater made opposition to the Civil Rights Act a cornerstone of his anti-government campaign and lost a significant portion of what it had left of the Black vote after the 1930s, the party of Lincoln has been tagged as the party of white people.
Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” which appealed to white Southern voters’ racist fears, helped the GOP make huge inroads in the South but further alienated Black voters. Subsequent presidents like Ronald Reagan, who ran on a platform of drastically cutting social assistance programs, solidified the Democratic Party’s hold on minority citizens.
But in 2024, Trump made surprising inroads with Black voters. Running against a Black candidate, Kamala Harris, the Republican nominee nonetheless won roughly 20 percent of the Black vote after winning just 13 percent four years ago versus Joe Biden. In 2016, he won a paltry 8 percent of the Black vote.
Trump did best among young Black men, winning about 3 of 10 under the age of 45. That’s roughly double the number he got in 2020.
And in a recent poll by AtlasIntel, conducted between Jan. 21 and Jan. 23, 69 percent of Black voters said they approve of Trump’s job performance, compared to 50 percent of white voters.
Like it or not, the narrative repeated in Colyar’s article that MAGA is a racist tribe hostile to non-whites doesn’t seem to be resonating with Black voters, particularly younger ones.
“I was at this party as were MANY other Conservative media influencers who are Black, Latino, Asian, etc,” commented Rob Smith, a Black influencer affiliated with TurningPoint USA..“NYMag used a whites only photo to push the media narrative that diverse Republicans don’t exist and weren’t welcome. You don’t hate the media enough.”
Pearson reposted several photos of Black attendees at his party, along with the following tweet:
Trying to figure out how I’m going to explain to @w_terrence, @VernonForGA, @Xaviaer, and all of these other black folks that, according to NY Mag, we’re all apparently white now.”
