Politics In The Black Community
[guest post by Dana]
It has been telling during this election season to see how much race baiting has played a part in efforts to get southern blacks to the polls to head off a Republican takeover in Washington. Of course, using ugly scare tactics not only reveals how desperate campaigns are, but how willing they are to insult the intelligence of blacks by distributing fliers in their communities which claim, among other things, that if they don’t vote, “land may be given to extremist groups to honor klansmen”. Further, they are also not above exploiting children to push their message:
Fortunately, not everyone in the black community is buying the despicable load of crap that the Democrats are once again trying to sell. Dear Democrats, even if you don’t believe it, people of every color are intelligent enough to understand, if willing, what Democrats have *not* done for them:
In the October issue of Ebony, attorney Chelsi P. Henry seeks to dispel the myth that Republicans have nothing to offer the black community and that they are not the party of “no”. Henry begins by informing readers of the impact this administration has had on blacks:
Blacks represent 10% of Americans, but unemployment for Black women is 11.6% and has been over 11% for the past six-years of the Obama Presidency. And unfortunately, we are 22 percent of the long-term unemployed. We all know when America catches a cold, Black America catches pneumonia and the President’s policies have hardly raised the tide for a majority of Black Americans. We have seen the greatest loss of black wealth, housing, and jobs in a generation under this Administration than ever before. Poverty has soared to 16.1% with 8 million little girls and boys growing up in poverty. There is a gap in promises and results.
Almost four-dozen Republican job creating bills are languishing in the Senate. What is the hold up? People need jobs. Small businesses need relief from overregulation and high taxes. Frankly, it is time to get America working again and provide a government that works—and Republicans continue to be ready.
Henry firmly believes the community can benefit far more from Republican policies than from what the Democrats have to offer:
If you only listen to or read ‘Republicans are against everything’ statements without thinking, you might think Republicans are against everything, especially Black America. The truth is that Republicans are for far more than they are against. The evidence is clear, our policies show overwhelmingly how Republican principles support Black America by expanding opportunity.
She offers a few specifics:
Earlier this year, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the only Black Republican in Senate presented his Opportunity Agenda. His agenda includes several job creation bills including the SKILLS Act, LEAP Act, and SEA Jobs Act. This legislation addresses high unemployment rates and provide solutions to reduce burdensome regulations and taxes, and increase job creation. Let’s point out that these are three Acts by one Republican Senator.
Last year, Sens. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell introduced the Economic Freedom Zones Act. This legislation helps to bring businesses in distressed areas, create jobs, and increase entrepreneurial opportunities.
Henry also addresses education, Democrats lack of job-creating policies and the American Dream. She concludes:
I am not a purist. I don’t believe that all Blacks have to be Republicans. I am passionate in sharing the conservative principles and values because they work. My life is testament to that. 94% of us vote democratically. However, our neighborhoods and communities continue to be ridden with poverty, high unemployment, lower paying jobs, and less-than-par schools, and when you look around many of our largest cities we see the same ‘ol same ‘ol Democrats in elected office.
Republicans are NOT against everything. Republicans have solutions to address the issues you and I face on a daily basis. Republicans are for job creation. Republicans are for school choice. Republicans are for our community.
–Dana
Hello.
Dana (8e74ce) — 11/3/2014 @ 6:07 amThe race hucksters are pretty much, like, ruining the future of the black community
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 11/3/2014 @ 6:15 amThat first sentence from Chelsi sure is a headscratcher
happyfeet (618bc5) — 11/3/2014 @ 6:25 amIt takes great courage to stand apart politically and speak up about it in the black community or in any community.
elissa (123b53) — 11/3/2014 @ 6:51 amWithout the traditional family structure in place to guide them, coupled with the educational system failures, too many blacks have been led for several generations now to think that all they’ve been lacking is political power. So when they see Barack Obama or Eric Holder reach such political heights it looks on the surface as if progress is being made. Of course it’s only an illusion because men like those two have nothing to in common with them and have in fact made things worse for them.
Voices calling her an “uncle tom” in 3…2….1…
Rorschach (61bf43) — 11/3/2014 @ 6:53 amThanks Dana, awesome post.
Georganne (e37667) — 11/3/2014 @ 7:09 amI got a mailer from a Dem candidate in our district that was pretty close to racist. It had a picture of her Asian opponent and the caption was “not one of us.”
Oh boy.
Patricia (5fc097) — 11/3/2014 @ 7:13 amWow, that flyer in the second picture is incredibly offensive. Can you imagine the blowback if republicans started distributing information implying black people are all poor and in desperate need of government assistance?
Edoc118 (8b952d) — 11/3/2014 @ 7:14 am94% of us vote democratically.
The poster child of that is the city of Detroit, perhaps more monolithically liberal and pro-Democrat-Party than any other municipality in the US. I’m not sure if even the city of San Francisco is as tilted to the left as Detroit is—ie, maybe 85% of SF’s voters favor the left.
A super liberal or leftwing culture and government hierarchy are akin to a family where the parents are very permissive, naive, disingenuous and flaky. The kids in such a household may do well in spite of who oversees them if they’re innately self-disciplined, talented and resourceful (iow, if they’re unlike most children in the real world). But if they’re average or middling, as most humans are, or certainly below average in terms of reassuring traits, watch out! Storm clouds will be forming up ahead.
Mark (c160ec) — 11/3/2014 @ 7:25 amYesterday, I told my daughter about Rangel saying “Republicans believe they won the Civil War”, thinking we’d both laugh at the joke, and found out that she thought Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat and that Republican Southerners were the ones that had black slaves. She’s in seventh grade, in as good a public school district as you can find in Illinois. We’re [in need of a morning after pill].
nk (dbc370) — 11/3/2014 @ 7:25 amYeah, Patricia. That “judge by the content of their character” thing has kind of gotten lost along the wayside it seems.
elissa (123b53) — 11/3/2014 @ 7:26 amnk 11/3/2014 @ 7:25 am–
This is for you and your daughter. And everybody else here, too. Those being interviewed are college students.
http://collegeinsurrection.com/2014/10/video-texas-tech-students-dont-know-who-won-the-american-civil-war/
elissa (123b53) — 11/3/2014 @ 7:37 am10. OMG
DNF (ba671c) — 11/3/2014 @ 7:38 amIn his book “A Dream Deferred”, Shelby Steele speaks to the case where the admission of Black students to Ivy League schools (under some special program) is believed to be beneficial to all of the Black population, where, in fact, it changes not one iota of the lives of the cab driver, ditch digger, janitor, etc. These latter folk are told that it does and for some reason they seem to accept it.
Mr. Steele presents this much more eloquently, as he does other themes in the book. I recommend giving it a read if you are unfamiliar with his work.
Carry on.
Gramps, the original (9e1415) — 11/3/2014 @ 7:45 amI went to public schools all the way through college. Ignaz Semmelweiss that I mentioned in the CDC thread, that Simon teaches in college, I learned about from my sixth grade homeroom teacher. Along with Lister and that Listerine is named after him. But that was in 1969. When the Alabama state troopers with the bullwhips and cattle prods, and the Chicago cops with the water hoses and nightsticks, were Democrats.
nk (dbc370) — 11/3/2014 @ 8:04 amWhat’s worst about that list, it seems to me, is that a lot of it is worded so that it can be read to mean that the reader in particular will lose benefits if he doesn’t vote. That is, it isn’t just that a lack of black votes will mean fewer food stamps, but “your food stamps can be cut off… if you don’t vote.”* I doubt this wording is unintentional.
[*emphasis added.]
David Pittelli (b77425) — 11/3/2014 @ 9:42 amThey don’t know how you’ve voted, but they know if you’ve voted. Every Chicago voter knows that.
nk (dbc370) — 11/3/2014 @ 9:47 amnot only do they know if you have voted, they will be around to ask you very pointedly why you didn’t….
Rorschach (61bf43) — 11/3/2014 @ 10:52 amObama has squandered an immense opportunity to help change the downward spiral that the inner city black communities have been on for years. Imagine if he made a point, even once a month, to visit an inner city high school — Detroit, Camden, the Bronx, LA — and give the kids an upbeat talk about the opportunities they could have if they applied themselves… like what Jesse Jackson used to do in his younger days with Operation PUSH, and Nancy Reagan’s ‘Just Say No’ campaign. Think of the inspiration–the first black president giving a heart-to-heart on staying away from destructive behavior, pointing out that there are opportunities in community colleges and getting job skills. Six years worth of wasted opportunities….
sam in nassau county (7f779b) — 11/3/2014 @ 10:53 amhttp://jonathanturley.org/2014/11/01/we-have-ways-of-knowing-if-you-vote-political-letter-directed-at-non-voters-leads-to-accusations-of-intimidation/
Rorschach (61bf43) — 11/3/2014 @ 10:54 amSam, he never stayed away from destructive behavior, so what moral ground would he be standing on?
Rorschach (61bf43) — 11/3/2014 @ 10:55 amRorschach, at some point you would think that he’d grow up….
sam in nassau county (7f779b) — 11/3/2014 @ 11:00 amHe hasn’t yet, he is still a petulant child. But now that he is president his tantrums can and do kill people.
Rorschach (61bf43) — 11/3/2014 @ 11:05 amThe city of Washington D.C may posisbly elect – or come close to electing a non-Democrat. And even the Democrat is a reformer who beat the nayor in a primary.
Partly it is lower crime and the resulting gentrification, but mostly this probabky is the dismissal of the sachool’s chancellor.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 11/3/2014 @ 12:22 pm10. Blacks being party line Republicans probably sounds to some people like an alternate universe – but that was the case until after 1932. But history textbooks probably take no notice of that.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 11/3/2014 @ 12:24 pmI recognized revisionist history when I saw it as a yoot. I very clearly and sternly told my 7th grade “social studies” teacher that he was teaching revisionist history. He agreed he was, by declaring all history to be revisionist. That was in the 1970s.
John Hitchcock (22cd32) — 11/3/2014 @ 2:23 pmThe difficulty is that if you want to address the quality of life issues which beset the black population, you have to adopt policy measures which have an ambivalent effect on the short term interests of the black rank and file and run afoul of the interests of black politicians (who will trash your reputation and do so effectively – see the experience of Mayor Koch in New York). You’ll have to be willing to implement these measures even though on the best day of the year, it’s not going to persuade more than 15% of the black electorate to change their minds even once. An analogue to the voting behavior of blacks (and, to a degree, Jews) may be found in Ulster: voting is an assertion of identity. It will require a reconstitution of the political culture of the black population as dramatic as that occurring between 1956 and 1965 for voting to measure anything other than assertions of identity.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 11/3/2014 @ 5:21 pmHere’s a question: Did the Republicans distance themselves from Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans’ role in the Civil War and its aftermath in order to bring Southerners aboard?
nk (dbc370) — 11/3/2014 @ 5:41 pm