Joined: 19 Jan 2006 {Posts: 180 } Location: Southern California
Posted: Sun 10 Aug 2008 02:34 Post subject: Will blacks ever shift from liberalism?
Found this one in today's paper
Quote:
STAR PARKER
Will blacks ever shift from liberalism?
August 9, 2008
A feature story in this week's New York Times Magazine asks, “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?”
This in the wake of a full week of TV talking heads asking if presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama played the “race card” in his response to John McCain's Obama “celebrity” ads. And an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal by black journalist Juan Williams saying “The Race Issue Isn't Going Away.”
Williams is right. The race issue isn't going away. And The New York Times' feature, which profiles new young black politicians around the nation – such as Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Newark, N.J., Mayor Corey Booker, and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter – sheds little light on the issue in what it says.
More revealing about the Times' piece is what it doesn't say.
The Times reporter never found it relevant to note that every black politician he spoke to is a Democrat. Nor did he see a need to talk to a single black conservative.
It's not like black conservatives have nothing to say here. Hoover Institution scholar Shelby Steele wrote a book about Obama. Tom Sowell has regularly written about him, as have I.
But black conservatives are not considered relevant to these discussions because race is not an issue of ethnicity but an issue of politics. Black politics means liberal politics and hence black conservatives are not black.
When I do media and speak as a conservative, I can expect e-mails pouring in from blacks calling me a sellout, who cannot conceive that I actually believe what I say, and for whom there is little doubt that I am a paid Republican shill.
Almost a third of blacks surveyed in a recent Wall Street Journal poll responded that race is the most important or one of the most important considerations in their vote.
But practically speaking, it makes no difference. Despite black excitement and pride in the Obama candidacy, the black vote would go for whoever headed the Democratic ticket, white or black. In 2004 John Kerry got 88 percent of the black vote.
The dynamics that the Obama candidacy has interjected is new only in form, not in content.
In the past, the liberal at the top of the heap for whom blacks overwhelmingly voted was white. Now that liberal is black. That's new.
Obama, as Shelby Steele has written, departs from the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton brand of politics in that he is far more sophisticated and subtle in how to play on white guilt and how to intimidate. That's new.
But the liberal content and agenda is not new, and this blacks continue to buy en masse.
The points conservatives have been hammering home for the last 20 years have not been for naught. There is increasing awareness among blacks how family breakdown is driving the social problems of the community.
This is not lost on Obama. His speeches paying credence to the importance and relevance of personal responsibility are well received among blacks, but also play well to the whites he wishes to reach.
But the program behind the words remains comfortably lodged on the far left. Big government answers for everything, redistribution of wealth, use of law as a tool for politics, liberal abortion policies, and legitimization of the gay agenda.
The relevant question is not if Obama means the end of black politics. The issue is will black politics – black uniform support for liberals – ever change?
In a Pew Research Center survey of blacks last year, nearly 90 percent said Oprah Winfrey is a “good influence,” but only 50 percent said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and just 31 percent said Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas are.
In the same survey, nearly 70 percent of blacks said they “almost always/frequently” face discrimination when applying for a job or when renting or buying an apartment or house.
Despite the fact that the survey showed that blacks have traditional and conservative views regarding crime and promiscuity, the sense of vulnerability defines black attitudes and politically trumps everything else. There's a lot of history driving these feelings and liberals will continue to exploit them.
Things won't change until blacks begin to see that these same liberal politics and attitudes are at the root of their problems today.
Joined: 26 May 2007 {Posts: 394 } Location: San Antonio, Texas
Posted: Sun 10 Aug 2008 13:05 Post subject:
Quote:
This in the wake of a full week of TV talking heads asking if presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama played the “race card” in his response to John McCain's Obama “celebrity” ads.
Honestly, I think black folks have their hands tied behind their backs these days. People are afraid to be seen as "playing the race card," so they don't call racism when they see it.
I've seen many situations where white folks are talking a bunch of crap, just DARING someone to "play the race card" so that they can say, "Why do you have to turn it into a racial thing?" (For example, a white person saying how disgusting he thinks those who don't wash their hair everyday are, or going on a 20 minute rant about how much they hate hip-hop and people who listen to it)
In this case, it goes on today with so many people who want to put down Obama... honestly, any white person who says Obama is Muslim or terrorist, etc.... I'm not afraid to say it, that person is RACIST.
Quote:
Despite the fact that the survey showed that blacks have traditional and conservative views regarding crime and promiscuity, the sense of vulnerability defines black attitudes and politically trumps everything else. There's a lot of history driving these feelings and liberals will continue to exploit them.
Things won't change until blacks begin to see that these same liberal politics and attitudes are at the root of their problems today.
And there's also the economic stance of the liberals that appeal to blacks as well.
I honestly can't think of one Republican president over the past century that didn't leave a bad taste in the mouths of AAs.
Honestly, I think black folks have their hands tied behind their backs these days. People are afraid to be seen as "playing the race card," so they don't call racism when they see it.
Compared to when and where? Most people aren't really afraid of playing the race card today. Perhaps some individuals, but I see people doing it all the time. Moreover, the charge of racism in a work or social setting still works wonders in shutting people up or intimidating them. Maybe your experiences are regionally specific.
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I honestly can't think of one Republican president over the past century that didn't leave a bad taste in the mouths of AAs.
Well, up to about the time of FDR many AAs were Republican and possibly a few decades after. Also, up to that time, the attitudes of both parties towards AAs were similar, so many Democratic presidents probably left a bad taste in their mouths as well. Woodrow Wilson comes to mind.
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