Post by krazeeboi on Nov 16, 2006 3:45:26 GMT -5
Commentary: Hey, Trounced Black GOPers - Want to Convince More Blacks to Cross Over? Here’s How
Date: Tuesday, November 14, 2006
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com
So much for the year of the black Republican.
All that dirty water that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell carried for the GOP two years ago in trying to frustrate people’s efforts to vote failed to stop his gubernatorial campaign from going up in flames.
He lost by nearly 24 percent.
In Maryland, black voters had no problems seeing through GOP Senate candidate Lt. Gov. Michael Steele’s attempts to camouflage himself in shades of Democrat blue.
He lost by 10 percent.
In Pennsylvania, Republican candidate Lynn Swann’s fame as a Steeler fell woefully short of giving him the currency he needed to carry him into the governor’s mansion.
He lost by 21 percent.
And all of the black Republican House of Representative candidates -- a group that includes a hatemonger like North Carolina’s “black Jesse Helms” Vernon Robinson -- were trounced.
Of course, one reason why black GOP candidates failed to live up to the hype was because their fates were tied to the dwindling fortunes of George W. Bush. We all know what happened there; Republicans lost both the House and the Senate.
But the major reason why the likes of a Steele or a Swann failed to get more black people to show up for the GOP soiree -- 88 percent of the black vote went to the Democrats -- is because their skin color wasn’t enough to counteract the party atmosphere; an atmosphere that offers little in dealing with the issues that govern our lives and expects a lot in the way of our acquiescence.
Yet I’m not here to rehash why black people should continue to snub the Republicans. It seems that most of us get it. Instead, I’m here to tell those black GOPer’s -- at least those who aren’t opportunists willing to set aside principle for a chance to shine in that party’s short line of minorities -- how they can begin to get more black people to consider the party.
The first thing they have to do is, well, quit doing a lot of what they’re already doing.
They need to stop with the condescension and cheap psychology -- like claiming that that black people are stuck on the “Democratic plantation.” What that implies is that black Democrats have a slave mentality. It’s offensive in that it implies that most of us vote Democratic because white Democrats tell us to do so; that we’re too passive or stupid to compare the records and the facts for ourselves.
The truth, however, is the exact opposite. Most of us are aware that the Democrats often take our votes for granted. Many of us have looked at the Republican platform -- mainly out of a desire to find ways to build political leverage by not being predictable voters.
But what most of us have found is this: Building leverage means nothing if the party you’re using to build that leverage with offers virtually nothing for you in the event that you have to tap it.
What good does it do, for example, if I decide to vote Republican because I believe the Democrats have moved too slowly on legislation aimed at curing racial health care disparities, when this GOP administration worked mightily to water down the extent of those disparities -- and thereby find an excuse to not move on them at all?
It’s one thing for our needs to not be high on the list. It’s quite another for those needs to be erased from the list altogether.
Black GOPer’s, for example, need to persuade me as to why I ought to care about whether gay marriage poses a threat to families when the black unemployment rate remains double that of whites and when struggling people haven’t gotten a raise in the minimum wage in nearly a decade. Not being able to provide for a family is more of a threat to family stability than whether a family is headed by Adam and Steve or Eve and Alice.
In a way, I can understand why some black people have gone GOP. Within all of us is this belief that being a free person means that we ought to not do things that limit that freedom. Being tethered to one political party is a limitation. It reveals that we still aren’t as free as we’d like to be.
But the key to breaking that tether doesn’t lie in gravitating to a party that, in many ways, rebuilt its base by pandering to the Jesse Helms and the Strom Thurmonds -- the people who became Republicans because they thought the Democratic Party was doing too much for black people and whose influence continues to resonate in the party. Nor is the answer to force us to deny our economic and social realities to get caught up in wedge issues that have little bearing on our lives.
The answer -- and the challenge -- for black Republicans to draw more black people is to help shape it into a party that begins to substantively deal with the issues that have made most of us reliable Democratic voters. Without that, joining the GOP won’t make any of us happier or unique or courageous.
Just more invisible.
Date: Tuesday, November 14, 2006
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com
So much for the year of the black Republican.
All that dirty water that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell carried for the GOP two years ago in trying to frustrate people’s efforts to vote failed to stop his gubernatorial campaign from going up in flames.
He lost by nearly 24 percent.
In Maryland, black voters had no problems seeing through GOP Senate candidate Lt. Gov. Michael Steele’s attempts to camouflage himself in shades of Democrat blue.
He lost by 10 percent.
In Pennsylvania, Republican candidate Lynn Swann’s fame as a Steeler fell woefully short of giving him the currency he needed to carry him into the governor’s mansion.
He lost by 21 percent.
And all of the black Republican House of Representative candidates -- a group that includes a hatemonger like North Carolina’s “black Jesse Helms” Vernon Robinson -- were trounced.
Of course, one reason why black GOP candidates failed to live up to the hype was because their fates were tied to the dwindling fortunes of George W. Bush. We all know what happened there; Republicans lost both the House and the Senate.
But the major reason why the likes of a Steele or a Swann failed to get more black people to show up for the GOP soiree -- 88 percent of the black vote went to the Democrats -- is because their skin color wasn’t enough to counteract the party atmosphere; an atmosphere that offers little in dealing with the issues that govern our lives and expects a lot in the way of our acquiescence.
Yet I’m not here to rehash why black people should continue to snub the Republicans. It seems that most of us get it. Instead, I’m here to tell those black GOPer’s -- at least those who aren’t opportunists willing to set aside principle for a chance to shine in that party’s short line of minorities -- how they can begin to get more black people to consider the party.
The first thing they have to do is, well, quit doing a lot of what they’re already doing.
They need to stop with the condescension and cheap psychology -- like claiming that that black people are stuck on the “Democratic plantation.” What that implies is that black Democrats have a slave mentality. It’s offensive in that it implies that most of us vote Democratic because white Democrats tell us to do so; that we’re too passive or stupid to compare the records and the facts for ourselves.
The truth, however, is the exact opposite. Most of us are aware that the Democrats often take our votes for granted. Many of us have looked at the Republican platform -- mainly out of a desire to find ways to build political leverage by not being predictable voters.
But what most of us have found is this: Building leverage means nothing if the party you’re using to build that leverage with offers virtually nothing for you in the event that you have to tap it.
What good does it do, for example, if I decide to vote Republican because I believe the Democrats have moved too slowly on legislation aimed at curing racial health care disparities, when this GOP administration worked mightily to water down the extent of those disparities -- and thereby find an excuse to not move on them at all?
It’s one thing for our needs to not be high on the list. It’s quite another for those needs to be erased from the list altogether.
Black GOPer’s, for example, need to persuade me as to why I ought to care about whether gay marriage poses a threat to families when the black unemployment rate remains double that of whites and when struggling people haven’t gotten a raise in the minimum wage in nearly a decade. Not being able to provide for a family is more of a threat to family stability than whether a family is headed by Adam and Steve or Eve and Alice.
In a way, I can understand why some black people have gone GOP. Within all of us is this belief that being a free person means that we ought to not do things that limit that freedom. Being tethered to one political party is a limitation. It reveals that we still aren’t as free as we’d like to be.
But the key to breaking that tether doesn’t lie in gravitating to a party that, in many ways, rebuilt its base by pandering to the Jesse Helms and the Strom Thurmonds -- the people who became Republicans because they thought the Democratic Party was doing too much for black people and whose influence continues to resonate in the party. Nor is the answer to force us to deny our economic and social realities to get caught up in wedge issues that have little bearing on our lives.
The answer -- and the challenge -- for black Republicans to draw more black people is to help shape it into a party that begins to substantively deal with the issues that have made most of us reliable Democratic voters. Without that, joining the GOP won’t make any of us happier or unique or courageous.
Just more invisible.