Yes, I saw the movie and am familiar with those points. It’s true and worth saying. But the narrative that the modern day left runs with is basically that the parties “switched sides” during the Civil Rights Era, Nixon’s Southern Strategy and all of that. D’Souza’s debunked that of course, but if you’re judging based on demographics, as they are wont to do, it’s hard to argue with the reality that as of now, the GOP is whiter than America in general, and the donkeys are less white.
But my point is really more coming from within the black community, where race and history play such a big role in our thought processes. Making arguments about which political party has historically been more or less racist just reinforces that. The better argument, IMHO, is to decouple race and history from how we think about today’s realities, and instead support whichever strategy has proven itself most effective. To me, the answer to that from a political perspective is clearly Republicanism/conservatism, whatever you want to call it, but traditional values, free market economics, and law and order.
. . . but whose fault is that? It’s not like the Republican Party has a history of excluding blacks - it’s the other way around, in the sense that Blacks left the Republican Party during the Depression, and haven’t given the Republican Party a hearing since (until, hopefully, Trump). We none of us have been around throughout history; we come along and find things as they are, and try to make the best of it. I came of age in the 1950s, in Pennsylvania - and from that perspective, Republicans had never been anti “negro” (as the polite term then was), whereas Democrats in the South were still George Wallace types. And I never was attracted to socialism - and Republicans were clearly anti, but Democrats were ambivalent at best.But my point is really more coming from within the black community, where race and history play such a big role in our thought processes. Making arguments about which political party has historically been more or less racist just reinforces that. The better argument, IMHO, is to decouple race and history from how we think about today’s realities, and instead support whichever strategy has proven itself most effective. To me, the answer to that from a political perspective is clearly Republicanism/conservatism, whatever you want to call it, but traditional values, free market economics, and law and order.
That is an argument I am only too eager to make - if I can get a hearing. Which I can’t, if I’m prejudged. It is that unfair prejudgement which shuts down the argument before it starts, and that prejudgement seems to depend on the utter distortion of history which D’Souza rebuts. That is why D’Souza resonates with me.The question right now is whether, and to what extent, Republican Congressmen-elect wake up Wednesday morning realizing that they are indebted to blacks for their victories. If there are 30 of them, even 20 of them, indeed if there are 10 of them and the margin of victory/defeat determining the House majority is less than that - well, I just think the political landscape will be transformed. For the better. If the Republicans lose the majority, that will be painful - but having Republican Congressmen who are in office because black votes were crucial to their success, that would be significant consolation.