Last month, Hasan Harnett, the state chair of North Carolina’s Republican Party, was banned from party headquarters and locked out of his email account. The party’s central committee accused him of “making false and malicious statements about other Republicans and staff,” and of attempting to divert funds. Harnett, the first African American elected to the position, questioned if the state party’s actions against him were a result of racism. “I mean seriously,” he wrote in an email to party Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse, “is this some form of ritual or hazing you would put the first black chairman of the NCGOP State Party through? Or is it because I am not white enough for you?”

Rewind three years. After President Barack Obama’s resounding reelection, the national party leadership finally recognized that its brand was anathema to many African Americans—to the detriment of its presidential prospects. In its 2012 autopsy report, the Republican National Committee called for outreach to minorities and a change in tone to be more inclusive and welcoming: “[T]he Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round, based on mutual respect and with a spirit of caring.”

The 2016 Republican presidential primary—principally, but not exclusively, Donald Trump—proves that the autopsy report is itself dead, and it occurred at the hands of the states. The GOP can never hope to attract more African Americans if it’s routinely defending itself against charges that its state officials are racially insensitive. If the party truly wishes to increase its minority support, the states will need to stop sucking the oxygen out of the room.

Harnett’s treatment is just the latest example of what state party leadership has been doing to African Americans for some time now. There’s the Georgia GOP chairman who has multiple suits against him for racial discrimination and making racist remarks, including allegations of calling a black party staffer a “house nigger.” There’s the time the Illinois state party chairman called Erika Harold, a black Harvard Law grad and former Miss America running for Congress in 2014, a “street walker” being pimped by politicians. And there’s the rush by Republican state legislatures to pass voter identification laws that have been shown to depress minority and poor voter turnout. In North Carolina, a precinct chair said of the state’s voter ID law, “[I]f it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want government to give them everything, so be it.”

As former congressman and Tea Party activist Dick Armey says in the autopsy report, “You can’t call someone ugly and expect them to go to the prom with you.” The problem the Republican Party faces today is that its state chapters are insulting the very people its national party leaders—if not its remaining presidential candidates—are asking out.