Prometheus 6

Quote of note:

After all, African Americans did not abandon the Republican Party; the Republican Party abandoned African Americans.

I couldn't have said it better...or even as well...myself

Why blacks shy away from the GOP

By OSCAR EASON JR.
GUEST COLUMNIST

In his farewell speech in 1901, Rep. George White, a Republican and the last African American to leave the U.S. Congress following the Reconstruction period, said, "Phoenixlike, he (the African American citizen) will rise up some day and come again."

There were 22 African Americans serving in Congress from 1870 to 1901; two were senators and most, if not all, were Republicans. Today, there are 39 African Americans in Congress and they're all Democrats.

Anyone who is politically curious has seen present-day Republican pundits proclaim their party to be historically "the party of Lincoln"; what is unfailingly left out of this declaration is the historical metamorphosis of the Republican Party after Reconstruction. Anyone who does not understand this genealogy cannot hope to understand the predominately white face of today's GOP.

The famous "Hayes-Tilden Betrayal" is said to have reversed many of the political, social and economic gains made by African Americans during Reconstruction. The 1876 presidential election was similar in many ways to the 2000 election in that Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Jones Tilden ended up in an almost dead heat. Tilden won a majority of the popular vote. The electoral votes in South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida and Oregon were disputed, causing a special commission to decide the election.

It is said a deal was cut that gave all disputed ballots to candidate Hayes in exchange for a guarantee that all federal troops would be removed from the South, leaving African Americans vulnerable to white Southern retaliation. Hayes was then elected president by one electoral vote. Once that deal was solidified, a retaliatory blood bath targeting African Americans promptly ensued throughout the South.

In the late 1940s President Truman, a Democrat, decided it was time to racially integrate the armed forces, causing outrage among some white Southern Democrats. As if this weren't enough, in 1948 the Democratic Party publicly declared its support for the civil rights movement. That was more than some white Southern Democrats could stomach, so they formed a "states rights" ticket that was appropriately labeled the Dixiecrats.

In the mid 1960s, the Dixicrats switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party to assist Barry Goldwater in his unsuccessful bid for the presidency against Lyndon Johnson. They were, however, pivotal in the Southern strategy that won the White House for Richard M. Nixon in 1968. President Reagan, a Republican, is credited with bringing all factions of the Republican right-wing conservative movement together, steeped in the Dixiecrat states' rights tradition.

During Reagan's administration, the issues and concerns of the Dixiecrats became principally those of the Republican Party. It was precisely at this juncture that the Republican Party ceased being the Party of Lincoln and evolved into what it is today to the vast majority of black America -- almost racially exclusive and dedicated to protecting and maintaining the status quo. In this context, it is difficult to imagine how the average civil rights-sensitive black citizen could blend in to today's Republican Party.

It is noteworthy that, in order to be welcomed into the fold, those few African Americans who now call themselves Republicans seem compelled to publicly denounce the shared reality of the average black citizen. They declare a level racial playing field in America where there obviously is none; they insist that America's racial problems are over, when it is intuitively not the case; they speak contemptuously of established black leadership, and adopt an individualistic, every-man-for-himself mantra that is the essence of social isolation.

Nearly 90 percent of African Americans voted for the Democratic candidate in the 2000 presidential election. African Americans must have accepted Rep. George White's challenge from the floor of Congress more than 102 years ago as rationale for the racial strife, periodic violent confrontations, civil conflict and the social movement that followed in the history of this nation. Few knowledgeable Americans would deny that the African American civil rights movement has been the primary catalyst in the reshaping of America's moral conscience. There seems to be a visceral distrust and uneasiness in the African American community today, a shared suspicion that our civil rights legacy is being purposefully misinterpreted and politically manipulated.

At present it would appear as if those issues and concerns of African Americans sensitive to civil rights are positioned diametrically opposite to those of the controlling elements in the Republican Party. There does not seem to be any political justification for the Republican Party to belabor issues near and dear to the African American community; these issues are simply not on the agenda, owing to the fact that there is no internal pressure to bring civil rights concerns to the table. It can almost be said that any minority group joining this party with a civil rights issue would certainly cause a degree of discontinuity; which explains why many Republicans are quick to say they welcome members of minority groups "as individuals."

Still, there is concern within some quarters of the Republican Party that the party is a bit too "white" and must absorb conservative minority individuals in order to truthfully boast of being the "All-American Party." Before there is a desire on the part of African Americans to leave the Democratic Party, however, there would have to be political, social and economic incentives to prompt this action. After all, African Americans did not abandon the Republican Party; the Republican Party abandoned African Americans.

Oscar Eason Jr. of Seattle is former national president of Blacks In Government and former president of the Seattle branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.