Posted on 07/12/2004 7:15:55 AM PDT by nypokerface
Shamin Rutledge grew up with Democratic values. But six years ago, she began to feel a conflict between the party's positions on abortion and homosexual rights and her personal values.
"The party just wasn't heading in a direction I was comfortable with," she said.
So she became a Republican.
Her decision placed her on the road less traveled by African-Americans, who overwhelmingly vote and identify with the Democratic Party. In the 2000 presidential election, for example, Al Gore received 90 percent of the African-American vote.
Despite the loyalty, political scientists and community members alike say there is increasing dissatisfaction among African-Americans with the Democratic Party. More are identifying themselves as independents or Republicans.
Where they're going
In 2002, 63 percent of African-Americans identified themselves as Democrats, down from 74 percent in 2000, said David Bositis, senior political analyst with the Joint Center for Political Studies in Washington, D.C. The center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that researches policy concerns of importance to African-Americans and other minority groups.
Ten percent of African-Americans identified themselves as Republican, an increase from 4 percent in 2000. The number identifying themselves as independent also rose, to 24 percent in 2002 from 20 percent in 2000. A third of those were ages 18 to 25.
Eugene Anderson, a former state senator and Democrat, became an independent nearly five years ago when he started taking political science classes at Wichita State University.
"I want to look at things from a perspective of not having any loyalty to either party," he said.
'The lesser of two evils'
The Pew Center, an independent public policy and political issues research group, found that the percentage of black Democrats who say "people like me don't have any say about what the government does" increased to 58 percent in 2002 from 34 percent in 1999.
The organization found that white Democrats' views were more stable.
"There is a lot of dissatisfaction among blacks with the Democratic Party," said Ron Walters, a Wichita native and a political scientist with the University of Maryland.
"The problem is they don't have much of an alternative and so what happens, generally, is they choose the lesser of two evils, which is the Democratic Party."
The Republican Party can stress hard work and conservative values but it hasn't been able to fight the perception that it is run by white, Southern racists, said Bositis of the Joint Center.
"The Republican vote is very much a white vote," he said.
Tied to civil rights
The Republican Party was founded upon anti-slavery ideals in 1854.
It is the party of President Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing all slaves in the states that broke away from the Union.
In 1870, Hiram Revels became the first African-American appointed to the United States Senate and Joseph Rainey became the first African-American appointed to the House of Representatives.
Both were Republicans.
But it was the Democratic Party that eventually became known for pushing the civil rights agenda for African-Americans.
The economic and civil rights efforts of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s and the legislation passed during the Civil Rights Movement prompted African-Americans to change their political affiliation.
The tie has become psychological, Bositis said, and remains to this day.
Seeking their vote
With more than 15 million registered African-American voters in the 2000 election, the demographic is not one to overlook, political scientists said.
"One of the top priorities in my administration is to reach out to the African-American community and try to build lines of communication," said Mark Kahrs, Sedgwick County Republican Party chairman. "We are slowly doing that."
Although the Sedgwick County election office does not track local voter information by race, Kahrs said the number of minority participants in the Republican Party is growing.
"We're building it up at the grassroots level," he said.
Rutledge said she felt like she was all by herself when she changed her affiliation to Republican six years ago.
Then she learned that the Sedgwick County Republican Party helped launch a Wichita Black Republican Council in September 2003. Now she is among 40 participants.
Godwin Opara is a member of the council and a longtime Republican.
Opara said he feels more comfortable with the Republican Party, which he says values the family.
"The Democrats are taking the black vote for granted," said Opara, owner of Transtecs Corp., which manufactures airplane parts. "Nobody is going to take my vote for granted."
But Lottie Shackelford, the vice chairwoman for the Democratic National Committee, said it is the Democrats who push policy issues -- education, jobs and health care -- that more accurately reflect African-American needs. "We are fighting for them each and every day."
Jason Dilts, executive director of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party, echoes that.
"Even though African-Americans and Hispanics do vote for Democrats a lot, we want to make it very clear that their issues are very important with us. They are what this party is all about."
He also points to what he calls examples of solid African-American Democratic leadership: state Sen. Donald Betts Jr. and House Reps. Oletha Faust-Goudeau and Ruby Gilbert.
"They are all very popular and are working hard in engaging the community," Dilts said.
Raymond Davis Sr., a longtime Democrat, said the party stands for working people like him.
"The Democratic Party is for all instead of just one group," he said. But people should vote out of principle and not out of party affiliation, he added.
Nationwide, the Democratic National Committee is working through African-American churches, fraternities, sororities and community organizations to register people to vote.
The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, is aggressively targeting African-American independents and reaching the larger community through a nationwide tour spreading Republican ideals.
"We are working to make them willing to look at the Republican Party," said Tara Wall, press secretary for outreach for the committee. "And we will welcome them with open arms."
True.
But the Civil Rights movement was the logical outcome of the New Deal. Remember Eleanor Roosevelt's public embrace of Marian Anderson after the DAR would not let her use their hall for a concert because she was black. Remember Truman's desegregation of the armed forces and early civil rights moves.
A conservative, night-watchman state would never have instituted the Voting Rights Act or what amounted to upending the traditional social hierarchy of an entire culture. Successive GOP administrations did not even pass an anti-lynching law.
"...we must be ceaselessly radical in breaking down the barriers to equal protection before the law."
...Agreed!
btt
"But the Civil Rights movement was the logical outcome of the New Deal."
The "Civil Rights movement" may have been the logical outcome of the "New Deal". But I don't get how any movement that embraced the concept of total governmental control of every aspect of our lives, such as Communism, Fascism, or the "New Deal", could by any stretch of the imagination be labeled a force for individual rights and freedom.
The people who might have attended the DAR concert had every right to refuse to participate in this exclusionary activity of a PRIVATE organization by NOT ATTENDING, or staging their own concert WITH Marion Anderson. Today's blacks need to appreciate, as Booker T. Washington did, that you can't have individual freedom and liberty without private property rights.
And, yes, Truman did the right thing by integrating the military. But even Roosevelt, the Democrats' demigod, didn't go that far.
"A conservative, night-watchman state would never have instituted the Voting Rights Act or what amounted to upending the traditional social hierarchy of an entire culture."
The fact is the Voting Rights Act was passed with the majority of the Republicans supporting it and the majority of the Democrats opposing it. The notion that Democrats were responsible for the success of the "Civil Rights movement" is the biggest case of national historical amnesia in existence! That is, excepting the national historical amnesia concerning the fact that the Republicans were also responsible the Emancipation Proclamation!
"Successive GOP administrations did not even pass an anti-lynching law."
The notion of passing a special anti-lynching law as some sort of litmus test of support of "Civil Rights" is patently ridiculous, on a par with "Hate Crime" legislation. The law already identified MURDER ITSELF as a heinous crime. Besides, all of the lynching was happening in the south, which was the land of the Democrats!
Your positions are further examples of how woefully ignorant today's Americans generally, and blacks specifically, are of their own history.
Black conservatives are the bravest Americans, and their courage should be heralded. Breaking from the liberal plantation has heavy costs, your black "leaders" call you Uncle Tom, your peers call you a sellout, or self-hating house n***er. Your old friends turn on you with a viciousness that is shocking.
The Left punishes apostacy with brutal and desparate tactics. Pray for black Republicans. They need it.
The Republicans wouldn't pass Civil Rights legislation? How about the Eisenhower era civil rights bill?
Republicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act in higher percentages than the Dems. But ever since 1932 and the Dem dominance of Congress everyone knew that the final action to end Jim Crow and segregation had to come from the Dems and that would only happen when the northern liberals were ready to take on the southern conservatives, a step Roosevelt always avoided.
Republicans didn't outlaw lynching? Silly me, I thought murder was illegal in the 1920's.
The notion of passing a special anti-lynching law as some sort of litmus test of support of "Civil Rights" is patently ridiculous, on a par with "Hate Crime" legislation. The law already identified MURDER ITSELF as a heinous crime. Besides, all of the lynching was happening in the south, which was the land of the Democrats!
Your positions are further examples of how woefully ignorant today's Americans generally, and blacks specifically, are of their own history.
Your responses are indicative only of your own ignorance. The entire point of lynching was the total complicity of local law enforcement in the act and its total acceptance as something of a carnival by white southern society. The only way to stop it, as blacks realized, was to federalize the crime and take it completely out of the hands of local law enforcement. The GOP, despite massive black support, would not even do that.
The "Civil Rights movement" may have been the logical outcome of the "New Deal". But I don't get how any movement that embraced the concept of total governmental control of every aspect of our lives, such as Communism, Fascism, or the "New Deal", could by any stretch of the imagination be labeled a force for individual rights and freedom.
Your equation of FDR with Hitler and Stalin is rather delusional and best ignored.
The people who might have attended the DAR concert had every right to refuse to participate in this exclusionary activity of a PRIVATE organization by NOT ATTENDING, or staging their own concert WITH Marion Anderson. Today's blacks need to appreciate, as Booker T. Washington did, that you can't have individual freedom and liberty without private property rights.
Booker T Washington hoped that if blacks abandoned all hope of legal equality that whites would simply let them live in peace. He hoped that blacks could be left to accumulate prosperity by whites. The flames that devoured the middle class black communities of Rosewood and Tulsa showed that he was wrong. Without the physical protection of the law, without legal equality, without civil rights, without a firm committment by the federal government to protect and defend those rights, whatever any minority builds will be Kristallnachted to the ground.
"A conservative, night-watchman state would never have instituted the Voting Rights Act or what amounted to upending the traditional social hierarchy of an entire culture."
The fact is the Voting Rights Act was passed with the majority of the Republicans supporting it and the majority of the Democrats opposing it. The notion that Democrats were responsible for the success of the "Civil Rights movement" is the biggest case of national historical amnesia in existence! That is, excepting the national historical amnesia concerning the fact that the Republicans were also responsible the Emancipation Proclamation!
Republicans of the Rockefeller, Javits, Brooke, Drinan, Margaret Chase Smith variety supported it. But if you bothered to check back issues of National Review (and I won't even go into Human Events and the John Birchers) movement conservatives did not. Quite simply, things like the Voting Rights Act or the Civil Rights Act which up ended the traditional hierarchy of an entire culture were gross violations of conservative, night watchman state principles. But in the context of the Cold War, Jim Crow was a tremendous propaganda embarassment for the US so most conservatives grudgingly accepted it.
Try to be more knowledgeable.
"The only way to stop it (lynching), as blacks realized, was to federalize the crime and take it completely out of the hands of local law enforcement."
So let's just "make a federal case" out of every crime perpetrated against blacks anywhere, like rape and robbery, and make any crime against blacks "special, on the order of a "hate crime". That'll fix it!
"Your equation of FDR with Hitler and Stalin is rather delusional and best ignored."
The Roosevelt administration was riddled with socialists (like Hitler's NAZIs), communist sympathizers and outright communists (including Stalinists), fully engaged in the project of tearing down the American traditions of a constitutional democratic republic. You can't ignore it. Look it up!
"The flames that devoured the middle class black communities of Rosewood and Tulsa showed that he (Booker T. Washington) was wrong."
Again, let's just federalize any crime perpetrated against blacks anywhere in America, for any reason. That'll fix it. But let's also just forget the many Americans, not blacks, killed during the many riots that have happened in predominantly black communities since the 1960s. They don't matter anyway.
"Quite simply, things like the Voting Rights Act or the Civil Rights Act which up ended the traditional hierarchy of an entire culture were gross violations of conservative, night watchman state principles."
OK, so let's just all adopt the entire panoply of positions of the leftist, socialist, communist, totalitarian Democrats, including class warfare, identity politics, and race baiting and forget all about the American traditions of individual liberty, freedom, private property rights, and constitional democratic republicanism so that we can all just get along.
Heck, we all might as well be Democrats.
Not bloody likely!
White America got over the Civil War, fer Crissakes, where far more people were killed than during any other time in our history, including the years of lynching perpetrated under Jim Crow. Why can't black people do the same? And more blacks are murdered EVERY YEAR in America today BY OTHER BLACKS than all of the lynchings that ever occurred since the Civil War years ADDED TOGETHER.
The arguments that blacks make rationalizing their justification for continued special treatment over everyone else just ring hollow and phony. I prefer to advocate the principle of "equal protection under the law".
Your ignorance is incredible.
The entire point is that for blacks before 1965 NO PROTECTION OF THE LAW EXISTED AT ALL. That was the "special treatment" blacks received. The riots I cited were when white mobs destroyed scores of middle class black communities between 1900 and 1930 and local law enforcement did absolutely nothing whatsoever to protect them. But of course you evade the subject.
You illustrate very clearly why blacks do not trust conservatives.
The entire point is that for blacks before 1965 NO PROTECTION OF THE LAW EXISTED AT ALL."
I defy anyone, even you, to assert that murder, rape, and robbery of black people by white people, or even by other blacks, was universally ignored by law enforcement throughout the south, let alone the rest of the country. And I know all about Rosewood and Tulsa. But I also know about New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, Detroit, Miami, Cincinatti, etc.
"You illustrate very clearly why blacks do not trust conservatives."
If the history of the world hasn't shown the black community the benefits of constitutional democratic republicanism and free-market capitalism, then they might as well just continue down their misbegotten path of ignorance and decrepitude experienced by the rest of mankind that has lived under the boot of totalitarianism and statism, and vote Democrat!
Heck, they do that anyway!
To bad the truth does not actually back up this statement, and from what I have read so far nobody has disagreed with it.
The problem the Republican party has as a whole is represented by this statement. We let them tell lies about us and never pull out the facts and call them on it. Tell a lie often enough and it becomes fact, and we let them tell the lie.
A good trick would be to urge them to vote Democratic, but phrase it in such a way that the connection of the party to Jim Crow and the doctrine of 'separate but equal' is absolutely unmistakable.
I defy anyone, even you, to assert that murder, rape, and robbery of black people by white people, or even by other blacks, was universally ignored by law enforcement throughout the south, let alone the rest of the country. And I know all about Rosewood and Tulsa. But I also know about New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, Detroit, Miami, Cincinatti, etc.
Yes. It was. It was so commonplace, so routine, that lynchings were practically staged carnivals where refreshements were sold. It was an era where the Senator from Tennesee bragged that he could not possibly remember how many black men he had killed. It was an era where Booker T Washington himself was physically beaten on the street in public by a white man and it was Booker, not the white man, who went to trial (to make the point that even the most powerful black man in America could be beaten up by any white man who wanted to). And what do the pogroms (and that is what they were) that took place in Rosewood and Tulsa have to do with Newark and Detroit ? Were the police on the side of the rioters in Newark and Detroit ? They were in Tulsa and Rosewood.
You are precisely the kind of conservative blacks have no good reason whatsoever to trust.
Remind them Bull Conner and George Wallis were mainstream democrats.
So9
I'm fairly certain you know the answer. One of the most successful Big Lies to come out of the twentieth century is that the Democratic Party is the natural political home for Americans of African descent.
Two final minor, albeit instructional, examples: George H.W. Bush was one of the earliest fund raisers for the United Negro College Fund. Regarding his son, having been raised by Yankee parents in segregated 1950's and 60's Midland, Texas one of Junior's first memories was having his mouth washed out with soap when his mother heard him use a racial slur that was commonplace among his classmates. No one has ever reported hearing him utter the word since.
"Yes. It was. It was so commonplace, so routine, that lynchings were practically staged carnivals where refreshements were sold. It was an era where the Senator from Tennesee bragged that he could not possibly remember how many black men he had killed. It was an era where Booker T Washington himself was physically beaten on the street in public by a white man and it was Booker, not the white man, who went to trial (to make the point that even the most powerful black man in America could be beaten up by any white man who wanted to)."
I must say, I would be moved to righteous indignation if I were a witness to the kind of mindless injustice and cruelty you describe. And I would certainly act to stop such depradations. But I can't buy the argument that this kind of thing was a daily occurrence, condoned by the police, and indicative of the attitudes of the majority of white people in this country. If this were true, then no change would have been possible. There would have been no Abolitionist movement and no "Civil Rights movement".
I've read "Up From Slavery" and am familiar with the injustices Booker T. Washington was forced to endure. But I also know that many members of the white community admired the man and supported him in many ways, and suffered as a result. As a Catholic, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the many instances of injustice suffered by Catholics, and Jews as well, at the hands of these sorts of murderers during the same era.
However, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with my original point. The Marxist argument for Leviathan government, or with the Democrat implementation of socialistic and communistic policies resulting in total government control of every aspect of our lives, will only engender more of the same. If anything, it reinforces the need to better implement the principles of freedom and liberty, with equal protection under the law, for ALL people. And world history of the past two hundred years has clearly shown that the American system is more likely to result in social justice, by any measure, than any other form of government or economic organization that has been tried.
"And what do the pogroms (and that is what they were) that took place in Rosewood and Tulsa have to do with Newark and Detroit ? Were the police on the side of the rioters in Newark and Detroit ? They were in Tulsa and Rosewood."
The point I tried to make here is that there is a myopic distortion in focusing on your own tribulations, to the point of fetishism, without regard to the similar trials of others unlike yourself in other communities around the world. Why bitch today about what happened in the Jim Crow south when literally millions more have been consumed by statist lunacies around the world in the same time period? And then conclude that what we need to do is continue down the very road, through Democrat statist policies, that led to the multitudinous bloodshed on a vastly greater scale?
This is the problem of the black community. There needs to be a maturation on the part of the majority of blacks that their real future lies with the principles of freedom and liberty in this imperfect world. And it won't happen under big government Democrats, but only with the policies of those "conservative" Republicans they constantly, and STUPIDLY, want to vilify.
Ever heard of Social Darwinism, Nordic Supremacy, eugenics, etc ? These attitudes were shared by all educated whites between 1876 and the 1930's. They were taught in schools and universities, preached in churches, and regarded as the obvious truth by every voice of moral, scientific, political, and intellectual authority in white America. It was perfectly normal and acceptable to talk about "higher" and "lower" races. What made it different for the Irish was that, being white, they could rise and be assimilated. Sure they had no better status than blacks when they got off the boat. But they were still white and were therefore free to violently run blacks out of the jobs they competed for. The volume of violence that was directed at blacks during this period is absolutely staggering.
The situation changed because of external upheavals. The cataclysm of two world wars and the depression crippled the confidence of western civilization. Educated people in 1950 didn't have the smug certainty of their innate superiority over the 'lower races' that they would have had in 1890. The Holocaust discredited white supremacism and racism in the eyes of the educated westerner, as well as finishing what was left of the west's arrogant sense of superiority. The emergence of the Soviet Union which explicitly rejected white supremacism and the collapse of the colonial empires required attitude adjustments. In the Cold War Jim Crow was a terrible propaganda embarrassment for the US. Geopolitical reality required treating non-white people as equals. Furthermore, the New Deal created the concept of the federal government as an agent of societal change, not a night watchman state that just waited for 'the marketplace' to take hold. These were the factors that created the Civil Rights movement, a movement that would have been violently smashed by white Southerners as it was in the 1870's without the active support of the federal government.
The point I tried to make here is that there is a myopic distortion in focusing on your own tribulations, to the point of fetishism, without regard to the similar trials of others unlike yourself in other communities around the world. Why bitch today about what happened in the Jim Crow south when literally millions more have been consumed by statist lunacies around the world in the same time period?
Telling someone with a foot on the back of his neck to take a larger view of things and look beyond his "fetishistic" petty concerns is ludicrous. You fight for your freedom any way you can and take whatever help is offered. Help came almost entirely from the left. None came from conservatives. Sure Rockefeller Republicans helped a great deal. But movement conservatives (if you bothered to check what Buckley, et al, were writing at the time) confined themselves to empty expressions of sympathy and an unswerving devotion to the night watchman state.
The ends of slavery and Jim Crow were federal big government statism at its best so expecting blacks to become "states' rights" or "limited government" or "night watchman state" advocates is foolish. People's politics, like the security policy of nations, are determined by their interests and historical experiences.
Sam, I am in agreement with many of the points you make here. It would behoove more conservatives to find out exactly why it is that most blacks, including middle and upper class blacks, still support the leftist Democrat party. Unfortunately, many conservatives that I have encountered like to dismiss blacks as "welfare queens" and they say that the only reason blacks support the Democrat party is because they want handouts.
It is the very nature of conservatives to CONSERVE society and fight for limited government, both of which are at odds with the civil rights movement. The Republicans who championed the civil rights movement weren't necessarily conservatives. Conservatives for the most part would rather cautiously guard society, not fight for radical changes in law, especially federal law.
It was the federal government that stepped in and "saved" black people. The states in which they lived did nothing to help them. Many black people feel that without the federal government, they would never have achieved any kind of equal rights. This is a big reason why so many blacks are socially quite conservative, but in every way support big government.
I think this is sad. I think that if the black community had fought for its own freedom and independence the way the early Americans did, then they'd champion self-reliance and the benefits of a limited government. As it is, unfortunately many of them are afraid that if their big government "protections" and special status are ever rescinded, they'll lose all of their rights again.
"Ever heard of Social Darwinism, Nordic Supremacy, eugenics, etc ? These attitudes were shared by all educated whites between 1876 and the 1930's. They were taught in schools and universities, preached in churches, and regarded as the obvious truth by every voice of moral, scientific, political, and intellectual authority in white America."
Bullshit!
"Telling someone with a foot on the back of his neck to take a larger view of things and look beyond his "fetishistic" petty concerns is ludicrous. You fight for your freedom any way you can and take whatever help is offered. Help came almost entirely from the left. None came from conservatives."
More bullshit!
"The ends of slavery and Jim Crow were federal big government statism at its best so expecting blacks to become "states' rights" or "limited government" or "night watchman state" advocates is foolish."
Bullshit times three!
So go ahead and vote for the Democrats. They agree with your bullshit!
It is obvious that your ignorance is so extreme, so total, so deliberate that you have nothing intelligent to say in response and can only resort to obscenities.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.