Posted on 01/05/2002 5:24:58 AM PST by Check_Your_Premises
Glad you're on our side.
Don't you just love a man who speaks his mind plain and clear as day.
No wonder you're a conservative.
Listen, my impaired friend; it is exactly the kind of drivel you spout that makes thinking Blacks run from the Liberals and Poverty Pimps in droves. How dare you attempt to decide for us just how and when we will acheive authenticity? What on earth makes you think it is for you to say in the first place what is authentic and what is not?...I have NO obligation to work WITHIN or on BEHALF of the Black community, because I AM the damn Black community [Amen!], as much as anyone else.
It is fascinating that the underlying a priori assumption that liberal blacks make when attacking a conservative black is that the conservative has moved "over there" while the liberals are "still here". Who says that my free and considered choice to identify myself with conservative ideology is somehow a departure from the best interests and well-being of blacks in general? The fact of the matter is, most conservative blacks I know (many of us in the military and some of the generations PRIOR to the 60s) think that conservatism IS doing well by the "black community".
I'm Not A Traitor: Black and Republican - by Bishop Carlton Pearson ~ Posted on FR in Feb 01.
"I'm a black conservative. I'm a hard working law abiding black person not like those other blacks, those welfare hoodlums. I am not one of them, I am not cut from the same cloth as them and I want nothing to do with them."
For as long as black conservatism retains a wannabe image, for as long as long as it is perceived as personal and social preference instead of just ideological (innocentbystander, I will bet you $10 bucks that you do not have a black close friend and have never dated a black girl), it will never rise above eccentricity level.
Since the onset of the Reagan era, the GOP has won presidential elections based on the solid South and the West. This has made northeastern republicans frankly expendable in the eyes of conservatives who hold blue zone manners and mores in contempt. The economic shift of the erosion of northeastern cultural and economic dominance, the massive defection of disaffected white southerners to the GOP, have weakened the standing of northeastern republicans in the GOP to the point where they obviously have no real influence whatsoever in a party dominated by southern social issue conservatives (which of course diminishes their political competitiveness). A republican party that had any seriousness about the northeast at all would at least have considered putting a Catholic governor on the ticket as vice president. Was that too much to ask ?
The abuse Colin Powell has received from conservatives who apparently care nothing about wooing any black support, the sneering RINO description of republicans who aren't southern enough... these aren't exactly encouraging signs for any black political defection of any scope.
The quotation marks around "civil rights" were intentional.
I was NOT equating the repudiation of civil rights with acceptance of conservatism. What I was talking about the hypothetical person repudiating was not what the civil rights movement WAS, but what it has BECOME
I believe most people who believe in my brand of conservatism are whole heartedly in favor of what the civil rights movement was. The civil rights movement was created with the goal of uplifting a race of people that had been held down both institutionally (direct government sanction) and by the tremendous cultural damage that slavery inflicted on this race.
I believe the civil rights movement now is an effectively hijacked movement with the goal of continuing and subsidizing the cultural legacy of slavery (destruction of the nuclear family), and it encourages all deflection of personal responsiblility to the convenient white racist bogey man racist for the expressed purpose of keeping black down so they will make better mascots for the left to continue demonstrating their "compassion".
But nice try at putting words in my mouth. I hope this clarifies what I said, and any offense you took to my post was certainly not intentional.
I think that of course is an intersting topic. ANy person who has made the transformation from a lefty or a sheeple to a conservative should ponder this question because the answer holds the key to winning over others.
However, there is no group of people that I can imagine that would have a harder time making the above mentioned philosophical transformation than a black American. For starters they will instantly be branded "Uncle TOm". They will be subject to derision. NOt to mention the fact that their entire lives they are bombarded with the propaganda of the left (as we all are) to hate conservatives. It almost appears to be a part of the black American "archetype".
But what do I know, I am just a cracker, thus the reason I posted.
It is hard to approach these topics sometimes with out being taken the wrong way.
As for the viscious attacks against Colin Powell by the GOP I surely must ask if you are joking. Colin Powell and any other black even marginally off the liberal plantation is attacked with the most vile of language as to not be believed. Conservative Republicans are critical of Powell becasue we disagree with his views. The Left and Democrats seek to destroy the man's very soul with their rhetoric- they attack him and other black Republicans or even moderate centrists as race traitors.
Northeast Republicans did not lose their vitality because the rest of the party got more socially conservative. They lost their vitality because they stand for absolutly nothing that can't be found in a Democrat. I have watched as the Northeast Republican parties in my own short life span sold out and purged all social conservatives from their ranks- wooed the left on issues ranging from gays to abortion rights and are in worse shape than it has ever been before. I think Massachusetts has reached a record low with only 12 percent of registered voters being Republican. In fact- on the local level one is far more likely to find a Democrat who is socially conservative than a Republican
And further- poll after poll show that African Americans identify far more with social conservativism than with social Liberalism. So I don't see how a turning more to the Left on social issues is going to attract blacks as voters.
Quite Frankly- all this blather about how to attract black voters is nonsense. The GOP should just stay the course. As the "racism" excuse gets more and more tired (and there are encouraging signs in the popular culture that blacks are not buying it anymore) and more and more move into the middle class then the shift will occur. There is no magic potion or spell that the GOP can cast over blacks to make them vote GOP- it will just happen.
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