Posted on 08/13/2007 10:27:22 PM PDT by BnBlFlag
Commentary: The Red State-Slave State Connection is all too Real Commentary: The Red State-Slave State Connection is all too Real Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 By:
Last week while I was up at Harvard University meeting with black columnists from around the country, including several of my BlackAmericaWeb.com colleagues, Michael Dawson took me to school with his map that shows the overlap between Republican red states and the old Confederacy and slave-friendly territories. Dawson is a professor of government and Afro-American studies who specializes in the ways that race and politics intersect.
I was sold. His map spoke to the things you cant help but notice when you live in a red state like Alabama especially if youre black.
Things like pickup trucks with gun racks and Confederate flag bumper stickers. White teens wearing the Confederate flag on their T-shirts. Statues memorializing old Confederate leaders like Nathan Bedford Forrest. Commemorations of the Confederate dead by state officials, especially speeches in which they maintain that the Civil War or, as some of them might say, the War Between the States or the War of Northern Aggression was fought over states rights, not slavery. And predominantly, the people who espouse these things in the red states are white Republicans.
Because Dawsons map rings so true to me, I expected to hear Alabamas lone black congressman, Artur Davis of Birmingham, echo his sentiments. Im not persuaded by that analysis, said Davis, a Democrat, during our phone interview last week.
My jaw dropped. Davis is a sharp brother, himself a Harvard grad, who has been dedicated to addressing issues affecting poor blacks in our state. I just knew hed agree with the map analysis.
Sure, race still influences our politics, Davis explained. However, he believes that cultural conservatism, not race, is the pivotal issue in red states.
Weve got to find a way to talk to fiscally and culturally conservative values, he said. We have to find a way to move to the center.
And for Davis, that means that his fellow Democrats and their progressive supporters should move away from advocating for gay marriage, for example. Americans are opposed to discrimination against homosexuals, he said. Where people part company is on the very specific institution of marriage.
Davis would rather see his party advocate for tolerance of gays. Thurgood Marshall didnt go to court to argue for lifting the ban on interracial marriage but against separate and unequal schools.
With states erecting gay marriage bans like Christmas trees and a U.S. Supreme Court that is bound to get more conservative in the next four years, Davis wants Democrats and progressives to be pragmatic.
The black community had to pick and choose its battles, Davis said. The gay community will have to do the same.
Davis point of view has merit, though it sounds like the slow down argument Dr. King and other civil rights leaders used to hear from black and white leaders advocating caution on civil rights. Still, his analysis of the red state mentality is very accurate and deserves consideration, even though its incomplete.
Alabamans just elected a candidate to our state Supreme Court who openly cavorts with rebel flag-waving neo-Confederates. And in 2000, the final vote to remove a ban on interracial marriage from our state constitution a ban which had been rendered null and void by the U.S. Supreme Court 33 years before broke down to a shamefully close 60 percent to 40 percent. Thats barely passing in my book, especially since removing it was supposed to be our opportunity to showcase a new Alabama. Maybe we could, if we could ever get rid of the old Alabama.
One of my neighbors, who had barely spoken to me, one day knocked on my door and asked me to help him unload a new couch and love seat from his truck. Hes a young white guy with an ex-military look: close-cut hair, muscular and all tattooed up.
We got the couch off first and struggled to get it through his narrow front door. I could see a giant U.S. flag and an Alabama state flag tacked up on his wall.
Thats nice, I thought. Then I looked to my left and saw his Confederate flag, also on the wall.
What the hell?
Due respect to Congressman Davis, but my neighbor and I are separated by more than cultural conservatism. After seeing that flag on his wall, I didnt have to ask him about his politics or for whom he was voting. It told me all I needed to know.
Dixie Ping!
Yeah, I sure see alot of sh-t kickers flying confederate battle flags in Somerset, Hunterdon, Morris, Warren, Sussex, and Monmouth Counties here in New Jersey (all of which voted for Bush in 2004). You could make an argument about Cape May County, which is south of the Mason-Dixon line, but so is Cumberland, which voted for Kerry, and had legally segregated schools into the 1950s.
Because we know that the most pressing problem affecting the black community is guys displaying Confederate flags.
That inner-city murder rate? It just PALES in comparison to that supremely important Confederate flag issue.
Red state/slavery == blue state/abortion.
Post of the day!
(What an idiot.)
What a pant-load. Lincoln was a Republican. Byrd was a KKK Democrat. Jim-Crow? Democrats. Come on people. Can’t we just hire Mark Levin to go around and verbally vaporize these twits?
The author failed to note (as did his Harvard-educated ‘sharp brother’, apparently) that those red states of the Old South were (D) from the Civil War up until ~20 years ago...
The democrat party has been enslaving blacks since the 1820s. It has ALWAYS been the party of slavery, depending on “black field hands” (like Sharpton, Jesses Jackson and the despicable author of this nonsense) to keep the chattel in line.
In contrast the Republican Party, and its principles, have always been there to liberate not only blacks, but all Americans.
Wasn’t the DNC the official political party of the Confederate States?
What that map really shows, is that where ever organized crime flourishes, there too is the DNC dominant.
Oops, rambled a little there. Just the way that article read to me. On the other hand, I did learn that Congressman Artur Davis actually has a brain and some sense.
He must be a lonely man in the Congressional Black Caucus.
The reason Northern and Midwestern states eschewed slavery of blacks was that it didn’t work in their farm & factory economies. Had it been advantageous to them, they would have had as many slaves as the South.
Dont forget the greatest and most potentially dangerous 5th column going, the State Department.
This is a hit piece since there was originally slavery in the north as well.
WHY DO BLACK AMERICANS VOTE DEMOCRAT BY 90% EVERY ELECTION? I grew up in the South (Texas) home of Lyndon Baines Johnson. It was the Blue Dog Democrats who kept Segregation alive in the South and fought against Civil Rights. My home county, in Texas, was 80% Democrats who used the “N” word as normal as breathing. It was totally segregated.
It was Republicans, the Party of Lincoln, who worked for Civil Rights for the American Blacks in the 40s, 50s and early 60s. LBJ just gets the credit for getting it passed. How? He collared the Democrat Senators & Congressmen and told them they had to pass it to keep the “nigra” vote. They were dragged, kicking and screaming, into session to vote for it.
As the old Campmeeting Song goes: “I was there when it happened and I guess I oughta know.”
The writer didn’t have the guts to sign his slander.
He must be using Louie Farrakhan math - - that's a landslide in my book.
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