Posted on 11/08/2008 11:06:10 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Shortly after leaving the voting booth, 70-year-old community activist Donald E. Robinson had a thought: "Why do I have to be listed as African-American? Why can't I just be American?"
The answer used to be simple: because a race-obsessed society made the decision for him. But after Barack Obama's mind-bending presidential victory, there are rumblings of change in the nature of black identity and the path to economic equality for black Americans.
Before Tuesday, black identity and community were largely rooted in the shared experience of the struggle — real or perceived — against a hostile white majority. Even as late as Election Day, many blacks still harbored deep doubts about whether whites would vote for Obama.
Obama's overwhelming triumph cast America in a different light. There was no sign of the "Bradley Effect," when whites mislead pollsters about their intent to vote for black candidates. Nationwide, Obama collected 44 percent of the white vote, more than John Kerry, Al Gore or even Bill Clinton, exit polls show.
In Ohio, domain of the fabled working-class white swing voter, where journalists unearthed multitudes of racist quotes during the campaign, 46 percent of white voters backed Obama's bid to become the first black president, more than the three previous Democratic candidates.
Obama did not define himself as a black candidate. So Robinson now feels free to define himself as something more than a black community activist.
"We've taken that next step. It's moving toward what we call universal brotherhood and sisterhood," Robinson said after voting for Obama in his northwest Washington, D.C., neighborhood. "We shouldn't be split and have all these divisions. That's why I say it's a bright day."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
That’s just fine with me. People deserve to reap what they sow. Race relations will be set back decades because there WILL be a backlash.
He thinks he is following Michelle Obama’s lead.
I’m almost more angry at Obama voters for what they did here with ballot initiatives than voting for a leftist. We had a sales tax proposal on the ballot. Those always lost by a surprisingly close margin. With the new Obama voters, the damn thing passed. My theory was that by the time the Obamagasm voters got to that one on the ballot, they just said yes without reading it.
I never agreed with the "African American" designation in the first place. I always felt that you should only have allegiance to the USA, and everything it stood for. You are either an American, or an African. You can't be both. And I think there are few others that feel the same way, African Marxists like Rev. Wight, and the Usurper, Barack Obama for example.
Maybe there will be one silver lining with Obama - liberal blacks will drop the chip and join the rest of society. As the saying goes, you can’t clap with one hand.
“One positive about Obama’s election: the professional race pimps are now out of work.”
That’s what I thought Jesse Jackson thinking as I saw tears flowing down his face at the Obama party on election night.
Yeah, I debunked that article repeatedly throughout this year and an email I wrote to a local gentleman who was touting it...
Dear ******,
I’m writing this email privately to you instead of posting in the comments section as to spare any public ridicule on your link to the Frances Rice piece on MLK, Jr’s party affiliation. As a member of Free Republic, when this article came out, many were excited to have Rev. King listed as a Republican, but upon closer historical inspection, Ms. Rice’s piece included unfortunate and not very well-researched inaccuracies regarding this claim and others, including:
“In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans.”
——I’m not sure which set of years Ms. Rice refers to, but presuming we’re talking about 1960, this would be a falsehood, unfortunately. Now it was correct that up until about 1932, Blacks were overwhelmingly Republican in both the north and the south (at least in the latter case, where the few were able to be registered to vote), but with FDR, Blacks in the north started shifting to the Democrat party (though in some cases, could support the GOP up until the 1960s, such as Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a Democrat, endorsing Eisenhower in 1956), but as they became part of the overwhelmingly Democrat political machines, they were absorbed fairly heavily by the 1960s. The South was a different story, and most Blacks remained GOP until the mid 1960s, but just prior to the signing of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts, when they, too, bolted heavily into the Democrat party (despite the fact that it took Republican support to even get those acts passed, something swiftly and now almost entirely ignored). Even here in TN, supposedly Black voters that could vote in Memphis provided the margin of victory for Richard Nixon’s win in our state in 1960 (but not 8 years later when they voted for Humphrey).
“And after he became president, John F. Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph who was a black Republican.”
-— Asa Phillip Randolph and his wife were, in fact, not Republicans, but prominent New York Socialists, both of whom had been candidates for Congress under that banner in the early part of the 20th century. Although Randolph later became more “moderate” in his views, he was still a member of the left-wing NY Liberal Party by the 1960s.
There was no indication King was registered in either party (at least in the 1960s). Although King’s father (MLK, Sr.), was a registered (or self-declared) Republican and initially supported Nixon in 1960, following his son’s arrest that resulted in the phone call by the Kennedy campaign to the jailhouse, King’s father endorsed JFK (and if MLK, Jr. cast a vote that year, it likely also was for JFK). MLK, Sr. supported Democrat candidates from then on, including most prominently for Jimmy Carter in 1976 (8 years after his son’s assassination). Quite unfortunate and shocking given Carter’s own legacy of race-baiting in his 1970 race for GA Governor.
Although many aspects of Rice’s piece are correct, the presumption King was a Republican was an erroneous one. MLK, Jr. favored extreme federal government intervention and government-based solutions to problems facing the Black community, indeed, Socialistic solutions that contributed to and exacerbated the problems of the Black community to this day. These were the links to the discussions on the piece:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1919430/posts
...and when it was later reposted:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/1957006/posts
However, it is worth pointing out today that the niece of Rev. King, former GA State Rep. Alveda King, is a Republican and prominent pro-life activist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveda_King
I don’t see those who voted for Obama as being ‘American’.
How could they be when they voted for someone who hates it and everything it stands for, it’s founding as a free constitutional republic and capitalist nation?
Obama wants to destroy America as we know it, rip out it’s constitutional foundation, and change it into something we’ve always fought against, a Marxist nation who citizens are bound into servitude.
There’s a better word to describe those people, and it sure isn’t “American”.
Thanks for the edification
Excuse me, that’s a different article. That actually followed the Frances Rice piece (linked in the prior post), which put out the erroneous claims.
He was a Marxist, but he was not Anti-American, and was willing to support any one who was for civil rights regardless of party label. He was not a race hustling poverty pimp Democrat hack like today's modern “civil rights” leaders.
**That’s what I thought Jesse Jackson thinking as I saw tears flowing down his face...**
“Oh Dayum ... does this mean I gotta get me a REAL JOB??
I remember seeing that sign.. it’s not far from my house.. I was in the9th or 10th grade when He was killed
I remember it well. Pretty scary time in the south
They tell us a lot of things, but that doesn't make them right.
UGH. That’s the Frances Rice article I debunked — post #28. I hate seeing that pop up and smart people swallowing it. Ms. Rice should’ve researched it a bit more carefully.
blacks voted him in only about race....
and enough small brained, or brain dead whites voted him in simply because they fell for the "give the black man a chance" crapola and "change".
what they had to ignore to vote for him:..terrorist ties, corruption ties,black "liberation" hate, goodbye 401k, goodbye radio talk show, goodbye gun rights, hello abortion on demand...hello socialist policies....
no....this was all about race....nothing about content or character.
This change means that maybe Kings vision of not being judged by the color of our skin but on the content of our character might start to be a valid part of politically correctness. Affirmative action and government demographics in general are contrary to this philosophy. This means that funding for schools based on racial demographics (No Child Left Behind) will have to change.
There is a local controversy where I live regarding the bi-racial demographic category. The form talks about primary race and secondary race. I have yet to receive an effective explanation as to how one can be considered dominant when there are two parents and 23 chromosomes from each go into the mix.
I didn’t mean to turn this into a big discussion of MLK, as we covered a lot in those linked FR threads. The simple fact was that with the CRAs of ‘64 and ‘65, he effectively accomplished what he set out to do. From that point on, he struggled to remain relevant. I mean, why would a man in the course of a few years decline from leading a march on Washington to getting involved in a parochial transit strike in Memphis ? Personally, I believe he was deliberately trying to make himself “permanently” relevant by getting himself martyred (and a rather rotten thing to do to his kids, all of whom turned out messed up, with none, to my knowledge, having children of their own). He was clearly becoming more and more radical by the time of his assassination (especially on Vietnam, an issue he had to latch onto as the de rigueur cause of the late ‘60s when some audiences, including one my father personally attended at Berkeley, when the crowd bored of hearing him on the “settled” Civil Rights issue).
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