"If you believe in something, then stand up for it. Don't run from it," she said. "That's why, when Chris Rock called me and said, 'Stacey will you do this?' I said, 'Yes.'"A week after her now-infamous appearance at the Oscars, Stacey sat across from me at McCormick and Schmick's, a steakhouse in Oxon Hill, Maryland, roughly 20 minutes outside of Washington, DC. It was our first conversation of many over the course of the next four months.Read more: Ann Coulter Is a Human Being
"There are some bad cops. There are some bad everything—there is evil. This war that we're going through is not a war of flesh and blood. We have to know that. It's a supernatural war."There's bad cops, there's good cops, but I think most of all there are good cops.
Stacey made a point to tell me that she disagrees with the Führer's political beliefs. ("Hitler was an evil man.") She simply thinks conservatives should be more media savvy. But it's telling that she is a champion of propaganda, a form of communication that has historically relied on emotionally provocative imagery to produce a response. I mean, she could have explained her views without mentioning Hitler, but Stacey clearly knows a thing or two about working the media.How did [Hitler] get all those Nazis to do what they did? Propaganda!
That's What She Said
The gender wage gap is a myth.
"We need to get rid of BET… There shouldn't be a Black History Month."
She tweeted her support for Paula Deen.
"We all got blacked into it… We all voted for him because we believed, 'Yes, it's time to have a Black president.'"
"Shame on you, Oprah," Stacey tweeted, along with a quote from Malcom X, admonishing Winfrey for comparing Trayvon Martin to Emmett Till.
The Democratic Party has "a plantation mentality" for giving government assistance to minorities.
"The [girls] who like to be naughty, might go out and play and get hurt and then, you know… It then blames the alcohol instead of the person who over-drinks," discussing campus sexual assault.
"You don't see him as black," she said about Prince on the day he died.
"Roles should not be based on color," she said in support of a white actor being cast as Michael Jackson in a TV movie.
"I'm a capitalist. I know how to turn shit into sugar, but I don't do things just for money," Stacey told me. "If I did, I'd have a reality show right now. But I won't do that."Stacey's fine with Americans disagreeing with her views, but she's sick of her critics portraying her as a wealthy Uncle Tom who has betrayed her people. "[The biggest misunderstanding is] that I don't like black people or that I come from some entitled, rich background," Stacey said. "The things I say do not come from judgment, but from a place of experience."She hopes to reverse the narrative with a new memoir called There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative, published by Regnery Publishing, the conservative imprint behind Sarah Palin's Sweet Freedom and Ann Coulter's Adios, America, the anti-immigration tome that inspired Donald Trump's campaign. The book details how Stacey's childhood—which included drug-addicted parents, child molestation, and a pimp uncle and his hookers—made her a conservative woman.Read more: How Black Domestic Workers Organized Without 'The Help'
"My parents didn't…" Stacey stammered, still unable to explain or even understand how that could happen to a child. "I don't know if it's that [my parents] didn't care, or didn't believe me, or just didn't have any other options—but that's what they did. And bad things happened to me with these babysitters."Read more: Race and Revolution: What Being A Woman in the Black Panthers Was Really Like
"The [recent controversies are] nothing compared to what I had to deal with every day growing up," Stacey said. "I wrote this book because I want people to know I come from a place of experience, not a place of judgment, and that I love my people. I'm Mexican, I'm black, I'm Native American, and I love my people. I want my people to achieve the American dream just like everyone else. And I'm tired of them being bamboozled and lied to by the media, [told] that they have to be a certain way, live a certain way, think a certain way, to exist. That's just not true. I feel like, even if you hate me, read my book, please."Stacey holds a strange place in American pop culture. As an actress, she's mostly known for Clueless—which was an instant hit when it was released in 1995, and has since developed a cult following—and for being a sex symbol. She's been in Sports Illustrated, on the cover of King, and received tons of love from rappers over the years, getting name-checked in dozens of songs and starring in music videos, most notably Kanye West's "All Falls Down" in 2004. (Her influence on West has apparently been profound, based on his guest spot on Jamie Foxx's 2009 track "Digital Girl," in which he raps, "Your body make a baller spend cooked coke cash / Plus every good girl wanna go bad / In Playboy mags / Like Stacy Dash or Kim Kardash / And be a lady at it.") She hasn't been in a film that's matched her earlier success, but she has never stopped working. There are few years unaccounted for on her IMDb page. And after all that, she's landed at this place of the "professional conservative woman."I feel like, even if you hate me, read my book, please.
The More You Know
Stacey cites Shelby Steele, Ayn Rand, and William F. Buckley as her favorite authors. "I just think [Buckley] has a lot of wisdom and he's true and honest and transparent," she said. "Not only does he speak about the way he feels, he speaks about how it applies to life." She detests the division in the GOP and avoids labeling herself a neocon or libertarian. "My key issues are national security, our Second Amendment right, smaller government, and sticking to the Constitution."
Vote for Romney. The only choice for your future. — Stacey Dash (@REALStaceyDash)October 7, 2012
Millsaps set up a meeting with Roger Ailes, the chairman and CEO of Fox News, and in 2013, the network hired Stacey as a paid contributor. Next up was a book deal and a healthy schedule of conservative speaking engagements. (She has since stopped working with Millsaps. Millsaps and his attorney did not return Broadly's request for comment.)"I'm grateful God has given me a second chance," Stacey said. "I feel like this is my second chance."Her second chance has coincided with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Stacey's political and racial commentary has contrasted nearly every stance of the activists' values. According to Jasmyne Cannick, a political and social commentator in Los Angeles, Stacey is a joke to most socially conscious black people.Walk in the opportunities that the civil rights movement fought for, because we won that.
"African American women who are on the liberal side are a dime a dozen," Cannick says. "If you want to stand out, be a black conservative [who has] no problem self-hating and hating on your people, and you will be loved by all Fox [News] viewers—she has found a niche." But Cannick doubts that Stacey's views are having any kind influence or impact on conservatives."I don't think white folk everywhere are falling over themselves to find out what Stacey Dash thinks about a certain issue," Cannick says. "She helps Fox hit their diversity goal for the year."Stacey, though, sees her job differently. She says she feels more welcomed as a black woman at Fox News than she did as a black actress at movie studios. She considers her Fox News colleagues Kimberly Guilfoyle and Sean Hannity her close friends. (Hannity wrote the foreword to her book.)Read more: Talking with Melissa Harris-Perry
Stacey's reinvention as an outspoken conservative has affected her personal relationships in show business. Her longtime friend Russell Simmons was initially supportive of her new interest in politics, even though their views are diametrically opposed on almost every issue. He wrote about it in October 2012 for his site Global Grind, in a post titled, "Stacey Dash Isn't Clueless!" shortly after she tweeted about Mitt Romney. He said he "was impressed by the way she held her own. She is smarter than most about the issues and she certainly has the right to have her opinion."Stacey voted for the first time in 2008.
She hopes to one day move far away from Hollywood. "I'm a horse girl, so I want to live in the South," she said. "I want to own a plantation. I want to own an old plantation and have beautiful old trees and moss and lots of horses."Instead of acting, Stacey is betting her future on politics. She's launching Dash America, a new "political brand" that she vaguely describes as having three platforms: 21st-century feminism, gun rights, and unity—the latter of which Stacey defines as "no more race card.""No more racial divide," Stacey said. "Enough about race. I'm done. I'm so tired of talking about race, as I know the whole country is."I want to own a plantation.
"21st-century feminism [means] you can be feminine, you can be sexy, you can be empowered, you can be a stay-at-home mother and a wife and still be a feminist," Stacey said, reciting third-wave feminist arguments made in the 1990s—which was in the 20th century. "You don't have to wear a pantsuit and dress like a man and be a CEO to be a feminist. You can be a woman who empowers men and be a feminist."Read more: Revisiting Michele Wallace's Essential Black Feminist Text 'Black Macho'
Throughout her memoir, Stacey writes that she never feels beautiful. On our last phone call, I asked Stacey how she could possible see herself—a known sex symbol—as ugly."It's one thing when strangers tell you you're beautiful, and the world tells you you're beautiful. But if your mother never told you you were beautiful, then it's something that doesn't ever penetrate," Stacey said."It never…" she began to cry. "I'm sorry. It never really becomes a part of who you are. It seems foreign, so when people say that [I'm beautiful] or I read it, I don't feel it. I know I'm not ugly, don't get me wrong—but there's just something that I know I'm missing.""It's hard," Stacey said. "I don't feel good unless a man's telling me I'm beautiful. I don't believe him, so then I become insecure, and that's not pretty.""Are you happy right now?" I asked her, as she cried."Am I happy right now?" she paused for a moment before saying, "I am determined right now. I am focused right now. I am like a wolf right now."Correction: An earlier version of this piece erroneously referred to Jasmyne Cannick as an organizer of Black Lives Matter protests. She is a political and social commentator.