Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences
Each individual who voted for the Civil Rights Act was instrumental in its passage. But it would not have existed had legions of blacks not suffered and died for it. It certainly would not have passed if President Kennedy had not been assassinated and Lyndon Johnson not stepped up to bat. So Republicans should not be given credit for more than they deserved then, and they deserve credit for little or nothing since. The reason is that the party began to be appropriated or taken over maybe 30 to 35 years ago by the very Southern Democrats and their offspring who had been the most strident opponents of civil rights. It became basically the party of the Dixiecrats.
So it should not be difficult to understand why blacks vote the way they do. Most of us are not likely to vote for something or someone we take to be inimical to our self interests. Even when the choices are effectively choices between evils, we vote for the least noxious of the possibilities.
Indeed, that a person is a black politician, black military expert or a black jurist does not make him, in the eyes of blacks, the least of the evils. At issue is the degree to which that person’s views, interests and actions are seen as inimical to blacks. Blacks are at least as capable of deciding their own self interest as someone else is in deciding it for them. When one looks at the present-day Republican Party and all of the flotsam and jetsam collected there, one could conclude the party is rather ecumenical. Most blacks, however, remind themselves that ‘birds of a feather flock together’ and ‘you are known by the company you keep.’ Much of the company stamped “Republican” most blacks simply cannot abide, e.g. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurman, Jim Barr, Trent Lott, the NRA, the KKK, the religious right, the Florida elections, etc. What most blacks see when they look at this motley bunch are just too much that blacks judge to be noxious or just plain inimical to their self-interest. Even if their vote is for the least noxious of the possibilities, blacks will not typically see this as Republican. PS: If you prefer ‘black’ to African American, why do you label yourself color blind?