What About Black Conservatives?

What About Black Conservatives? March 25, 2010

So I was skimming through some websites, watching the hatred unfold in the comments section about the administration’s health care bill passing. As I mentioned before, it really irks me that somehow  black people are carrying the blame for anything Obama does– as if when this guy takes a shit, we’re there with baby-wipes.  It’s like stormfront.com has taken over every single forum imaginable. All of a sudden ALL black people are on welfare and spend food stamps on alcohol, all black people rely on Obama for EVERYTHING. Black people caused the housing crisis. They have BET? Why not CET? Of course all of this speech is insinuated, but very fucking obvious. So what’s with all this hatred? Well…

Anyway, someone posted a question on a Newsvine forum why you never see any black conservatives. There’s a lot of anger out there about why barely any black people voted for McCain and Palin. I would like to think of it as common sense, but to each his own. After all, black people identify more with conservatives when it comes to issues such as gay marriage and abortion. Didn’t Abraham Lincoln free the slave sin 1865? Didn’t Republicans support Civil Rights when the Democrats supported segregation? Well — as someone pointed out, 1965 is over and done with. Marinate on this:

“Democrats did not win the support of black Americans nearly as much as republicans their disdain for black Americans. From Barry Goldwater’s “States Rights’ presidential campaign, to Nixon’s Southern Strategy, to Reagan’s announcing his candidacy for President in the hamlet that killed three civil rights workers and buried them in an earthen dam, to Reagan’s campaign against the proverbial “welfare queen”, to George H.W. Bush’s “Willie Horton” ads, to Jesse Helms’ “white hands” ads, to the Tennessee GOP’s “call me Harold” ads, to George W. Bush’s South Carolina push polling against John McCain, to Trent Lott’s assertion that America would have been better off with Strom Thurmond as president, republicans have cynically sought to leverage racial pique and animosity among whites to their electoral advantage on a consistent basis. There is no need to take my word for this, both Lee Atwater and Ken Mehlman both have confirmed this.

The result of this long-standing strategy is not surprising. Republicans dominate in the south. For every Robert Byrd who decided to change his mind about race rather than change his party, there are three Trent Lotts, Strom Thurmonds and Jesse Helms’ who decided to change their party rather than countenance the extension and enforcement of Constitutional guarantees to and on behalf of black people. This near half-century of telling the tragically obtuse among the electorate who to hate, who to resent and who to envy has had a clear and lasting effect. Now, many republicans simply can’t help themselves; reacting with predictability on race that is matched only by Pavlov’s dog. Just a handful of incidents during the short “Age of Obama” bears this out clearly:

1. The Republican National Committee developed a fundraising campaign with the specific and explicit intention of stoking fear of President Obama
2. A picture on the Republican National Committee’s Facebook page featured President Obama eating what looks to be a piece of fried chicken with a caption that read “Miscegenation is a crime against American values”.
3. When she thought she was out of the range of a microphone, Ohio republican Representative Jean Schmidt told a “birther” that she agrees with her, calling into question whether some folks believe their own denials about the impact of race in these debates.
4. US Representative Lynn Jenkins shared that the GOP was looking for “a great white hope” to counter President Obama.
5. Congressman Jim Clyburn’s congressional office was vandalized with a swastika.
6. Congressman David Scott shared racially charged hate mail he received during the health care debate.
7. Mississippi republican State Senator Lydia Chassaniol gave a keynote address to the Council of Conservative Citizens – an organization with a well-documented history of racism – saying that “seeing you gives me hope”.
8. In the midst of her campaign for Chair of the Young Republicans Organization, Audra Shay, cheer-led racist comments on her Facebook page. She was re-elected.
9. Michelle Bachmann led other republican politicians in blaming the entire financial meltdown on – you guessed it – racial minorities when she stated that the mortgage debacle that ignited the global crisis was caused by loans “being made on the basis of race and little else”.
10. Minnesota State Senate Candidate Mike Parry calls President Obama “a power hungry arrogant black man”. He apparently prefers his black men unambitious and docile. He won the republican endorsement of his candidacy.
11. Republicans in San Bernadino County published a newsletter that included “Obama Bucks”, a food-stamp with pictures of watermelon, fried chicken, ribs and Kool-Aid surrounding a picture of the President.
12. A republican mayor in California distributed e-mails featuring a watermelon patch in the foreground of the White House.
13. A South Carolina republican activist shared on his Facebook page that an escaped gorilla was an ancestor of First Lady Michelle Obama.
14. The Tennessee Republican party distributed a collage featuring pictures of Presidents of the United States, depicting President Obama as two eyes peering out of a black background.
15. Adam LaDuca, at the time executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans, wrote on his Facebook page that then candidate Senator Obama has “a pair of lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami.”
16. The GOP chairman of New Mexico’s Bernalillo County said “The truth is that Hispanics came here as conquerors,” he said. “African-Americans came here as slaves” and that “Hispanics consider themselves above blacks. They won’t vote for a black president.”
17. A republican City Councilman enjoyed racist e-mails regarding the President and the First Lady so much that he thought everyone should have the same fun he was having. So he distributed and forwarded “jokes” that compared Obama to O.J. Simpson while others suggested that “n@!$%r rigs” should now be called “presidential solutions.”
18. Chip Saltsman, former chair of the Tennessee republicans and candidate for Chairman of the Republican National Committee, distributed a CD containing the song “Barack the Magic Negro”.

These are just a few of the incidents in the last year and a half committed just by people associated with the national or local republican party. This does not include the vile offerings from the legion of hate media talking heads or the garbage that passes for discourse on blog-sites like this.

Face it, Perunap. Republicans have been crapping on Abraham Lincoln’s grave since 1965. Your post and perspective that black people are somehow “duped” is offensive in the extreme and indicative of an abject ignorance of historical fact. People like you attempt to urinate on the heads of black Americans and swear it is merely rain.” –dwillie

To see more of this debate, click here.