I'm really glad to see you here.
Many, many, MANY years ago when I was in grad school, I lived in an inner-city neighborhood and attended a church that was successfully making the transition from a predominantly white church to one that reflected the neighborhood's change to being predominantly black. In addition to the usual things of driving around to housing projects to pick up tons of kids for Sunday school and Wednesday night Bible clubs, I got politically involved in the neighborhood and ended up being the neighborhood association's delegate to an important committee of the city government. I didn't use the term, but I guess I could have been described as a “community organizer” since I served on the board of a CDBG-funded neighborhood association and was eventually one of its officers, and I sometimes throw that in the face of Obama supporters who like to think conservatives know nothing about problems of the inner city.
I saw firsthand the incredible damage being done by liberal policies to poor families regardless of ethnicity, but which hurt black families more than white families. I also saw many black pastors and church members who should have been Republicans based on religious issues, but weren't.
We need many more conservatives who are not white — both black and Hispanic — or demographics will destroy us.
Yeah, that Norm is one dastardly fellow. Made me out myself, he did ;-)
Thanks, friend. I'm glad to be here. Frankly, I'm surprised that every conservative (black or otherwise) doesn't live at Free Republic. It's been my home online for almost a decade.
I saw firsthand the incredible damage being done by liberal policies to poor families regardless of ethnicity, but which hurt black families more than white families. I also saw many black pastors and church members who should have been Republicans based on religious issues, but weren't.
The Republican party of the 1950s and '60s made one of the biggest strategic blunders in their history, by allowing the Democrats to successfully position themselves as the rightful political home of blacks in that day.
Up until that era, most blacks voted Republican. It was the 'party of Lincoln', and emancipation. In fact, all four of my grandparents voted Republican all their lives, and never switched parties. Blacks of my parent's (Depression era) generation were about evenly split between the parties. By the time the baby boomers of my generation came of age, the capture of the black vote was complete.
It's only been since the dawn of the new millenium that a new breed of blacks has begun escaping the rigid ideological grip of the left and the Democrat party. Like me, many of these people have come to the realization that the Democrat party is completely at odds with the cultural core values of most black people, and that their policies and programs have devastated their communities.
The process of revealing the political truth of the Democrat party and their bankrupt leftist ideals to blacks, is a long one, but it is ongoing. I see little signs of it here and there, constantly, and have personally witnessed other blacks make their escape.
Now, that is what I call real hope and change.