Something that just doesn't make any sense to me...Black Republicans this election cycle

[TNHarley]

I'm trying to figure this out. I really am fucking trying to figure out how you guys can keep on lying about Trump. He fucking broke the color and religious barriers in Palm Beach. THIS IS ON MOTHER FUCKING RECORD. He broke them with his club.

And you guys keep lying about him.

He spent DECADES not renting to blacks in New York City and calling them lazy and shiftless in public.

This is on record dumb dumb.

Would you rent to a super predator?

 

[WheelieAddict]

Ever since I have been old enough to understand politics to a pretty substantive degree, one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a democrat. This election cycle has done nothing at all to help me understand that phenomenon any more than before. If anything, to me, this election cycle gives black more reason than ever to not be democrat.

• Clinton courts racists and has been since at least the early days of her campaign.
• Clinton wants blacks to gamble on her status quo racist policies that lead to Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, etc....
  
• What have Democrats done for blacks after they created the kkk, Jim Crow laws, segreggration, separate but equal, eugenics, planned parenthood, soft bigotry of low expectations, etc ad nauseam......
  
• Clinton goes out of her way to patronize blacks and hold them down on the democrat plantation

^Why Blacks don't vote Republican.

Yep....racist democrats oppressing them.......

^Why Blacks vote Democratic.

 

[owebo]

Ever since I have been old enough to understand politics to a pretty substantive degree, one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a democrat. This election cycle has done nothing at all to help me understand that phenomenon any more than before. If anything, to me, this election cycle gives black more reason than ever to not be democrat.

• Clinton courts racists and has been since at least the early days of her campaign.
• Clinton wants blacks to gamble on her status quo racist policies that lead to Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, etc....
  
• What have Democrats done for blacks after they created the kkk, Jim Crow laws, segreggration, separate but equal, eugenics, planned parenthood, soft bigotry of low expectations, etc ad nauseam......
  
• Clinton goes out of her way to patronize blacks and hold them down on the democrat plantation

^Why Blacks don't vote Republican.

Yep....racist democrats oppressing them.......

^Why Blacks vote Democratic.

Ever since I have been old enough to understand politics to a pretty substantive degree, one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a democrat. This election cycle has done nothing at all to help me understand that phenomenon any more than before. If anything, to me, this election cycle gives black more reason than ever to not be democrat.

• Clinton courts racists and has been since at least the early days of her campaign.
• Clinton wants blacks to gamble on her status quo racist policies that lead to Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, etc....
  
• What have Democrats done for blacks after they created the kkk, Jim Crow laws, segreggration, separate but equal, eugenics, planned parenthood, soft bigotry of low expectations, etc ad nauseam......
  
• Clinton goes out of her way to patronize blacks and hold them down on the democrat plantation

^Why Blacks don't vote Republican.

Yep....racist democrats oppressing them.......

^Why Blacks vote Democratic.

^^^Racist democrat

 

[WheelieAddict]

Ever since I have been old enough to understand politics to a pretty substantive degree, one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a democrat. This election cycle has done nothing at all to help me understand that phenomenon any more than before. If anything, to me, this election cycle gives black more reason than ever to not be democrat.

• Clinton courts racists and has been since at least the early days of her campaign.
• Clinton wants blacks to gamble on her status quo racist policies that lead to Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, etc....
  
• What have Democrats done for blacks after they created the kkk, Jim Crow laws, segreggration, separate but equal, eugenics, planned parenthood, soft bigotry of low expectations, etc ad nauseam......
  
• Clinton goes out of her way to patronize blacks and hold them down on the democrat plantation

^Why Blacks don't vote Republican.

Yep....racist democrats oppressing them.......

^Why Blacks vote Democratic.

Ever since I have been old enough to understand politics to a pretty substantive degree, one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a democrat. This election cycle has done nothing at all to help me understand that phenomenon any more than before. If anything, to me, this election cycle gives black more reason than ever to not be democrat.

• Clinton courts racists and has been since at least the early days of her campaign.
• Clinton wants blacks to gamble on her status quo racist policies that lead to Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, etc....
  
• What have Democrats done for blacks after they created the kkk, Jim Crow laws, segreggration, separate but equal, eugenics, planned parenthood, soft bigotry of low expectations, etc ad nauseam......
  
• Clinton goes out of her way to patronize blacks and hold them down on the democrat plantation

^Why Blacks don't vote Republican.

Yep....racist democrats oppressing them.......

^Why Blacks vote Democratic.

^^^Racist democrat

^Dumb

 

[Conservative65]

Ever since I have been old enough to understand politics to a pretty substantive degree, one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a Republican. This election cycle has done nothing at all to help me understand that phenomenon any more than before. If anything, to me, this election cycle gives black more reason than ever to not be Republican.

• Trump courts racists and has been since at least the early days of his campaign.
• Trump wants blacks to gamble on his "what the hell do you have to lose"
  
• What have Democrats done for blacks
  
• Trump goes out of his way to avoid blacks

Well, I'm not the only one who doesn't "get" it.

Perhaps because he’s now taking aim at an individual American citizen, Donald Trump’s attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage finally made it impossible to rationalize away the fundamentally racist nature of his campaign.

Republicans have tried, in part by squinting hard, to view his plans to raise a wall across the Mexican border and to ban Muslims from entering the country—which Trump doubled down on following the tragic events in Orlando—as policies focused on security, rather than group identity.

That’s a luxury of lax thinking few black Republicans have, and candidate Trump is forcing a reckoning for many of them.

“What are the Black Republicans supposed to do?” said Donald Scoggins, a lifelong Republican and the president of the Republicans for Black Empowerment, to The Daily Beast. “Donald Trump is really putting many Black Republicans in a terrible, terrible situation. We are basically a non-entity in the party right now.”

“Donald Trump wasn’t my first, second, third, or seventeenth choice,” said DeAndre Moore, a lifelong Republican.

For many black Republicans, who think it’s important that African Americans have a viable political alternative to the Democratic Party and want to apply the principles of fiscal and individual responsibility and accountability to impoverished segments of the community, Trump’s candidacy represents a tipping point.

The rise of the birther movement and Trump’s support of it could be dismissed as far-right radicals and a reality TV star talking nonsense and clogging up the airwaves, but not indicative of the mainstream GOP. New voter ID laws and voter suppression efforts could be rationalized as efforts to prevent (mostly imagined) voter fraud. Even the two attendees at the 2012 Republican National Convention who threw peanuts at an African American woman, while saying “this is how we feed the animals,” could be explained away as an outlier.

The RNC’s inaction on their Growth and Opportunity Project, which investigated how the party could do better with minorities following Mitt Romney’s 2012 drubbing, and the recent resignations of their black outreach staff, both frustrated the black Republicans I spoke with but after eight years of racially coded attacks, it is Trump’s rhetoric that has been the final straw.

“I don’t want to be associated with anything that has anything to do with Donald Trump,” said Hugh, one of several black Republicans I spoke with who didn’t want to use their full names out of fear of being excluded from their political communities.

One woman I spoke with expressed her frustration with how the rise of Sarah Palin and then Trump coincided with the rise and fall of Michael Steele as Chairman of the RNC. To her, this all indicated that the GOP preferred inarticulate, unqualified white Americans over well-spoken, experienced African Americans.

In talking with these black Republicans, all felt as though they are being forced to choose between their race and their party. Each said they don’t want to vote for Trump. Some have decided to vote for Hillary Clinton. Others may abstain from voting altogether. Several said that they intend to either purge this racist element from their party or leave it.

Unlike Speaker Paul Ryan, these voters see no way to denounce Trump’s statements as “the textbook definition of a racist comment” while continuing to support him.

They find solace in moderate Republicans like John Kasich, who has thus far refused to endorse Trump, and Mitt Romney who has consistently voiced his dislike of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. But the fact that both have been marginalized and unable to pose a legitimate challenge to Trump only demonstrated to them how dire the situation has become.

Many of Trump’s racist and dangerous comments are directed towards African Americans, but he couches these statements in coded language that encourages supporters to rationalize their racism away. Condoning his supporters beating up a protester who happens to be African American is not necessarily racist, but when he repeatedly encourages or tacitly endorses his supporters to violently confront and mistreat blacks and other minorities, it’s hard to miss the racism.

“You’re saying that about Mexicans, you’re saying that about me,” said Hugh.

“There is no way that you could even think about voting for someone with that type of language,” said Michelle of Virginia, who does not intend on voting for Trump. “Most Black Republicans behind the scenes will say no [to voting for Trump], and in front of the camera they will say yes.”

Trump is a continuation of the exclusionary social conservatism that most Black Republicans shun.

Many Black Republicans identify as conservative, and may personally oppose gay rights and abortion, but they also approve of the Great Society-era statutes outlawing racial discrimination. Their individual conservative beliefs do not equate to active support of policies that discriminate, harm, and marginalize minorities.

The paradox of the black Republican perspective often runs counter to Republican electoral strategies and impairs the GOP’s ability to appeal to minorities. Nixon’s Southern Strategy, which first won Republicans a virtual electoral lock on the South by using veiled, and not-so-veiled, racist attacks against minorities to appeal to white voters, remains a significant influencer in GOP electoral strategies, and Trump is clearly employing this playbook.

The black Republicans I spoke with see the rise of Trump as representing an era of hopelessness, and a return to the marginalization and social divisions that they aspired to overcome.

“I think the GOP has just gotten comfortable with not having the black vote,” said Moore. “As a black Republican, I’ll just say that this is a major embarrassment, total embarrassment. I’m trying to find something to give me some hope, but it is just not happening, obviously.”
​

So what gives? And mind you, I'm not looking for comparison-based or negativity-based explanations. I know what those reasons are, and they aren't unique to one's being black. What I want to know, ideally from black Republicans, is what about the GOP makes it a good party to belong to in general as well as for this election cycle?

Apparently you and the 95% of blacks that vote Democrat have looked at the results blacks have had by supporting Democrats. Blacks fall behind in many social, educational, economic categories where low isn't better. The same applies when they're higher than others and high isn't better.

Since blacks continue to vote Democrat despite the return they've been getting by doing so, tells me they either don't know how badly they've been used or they do but don't care as long as the pandering to them continues to occur. If they want to stay behind other groups in all sorts of categories, go ahead. They have no one to blame for it but themselves. If they want to blame slavery, they're putting themselves on the plantation now. Blame it.

 

[WheelieAddict]

Ever since I have been old enough to understand politics to a pretty substantive degree, one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a Republican. This election cycle has done nothing at all to help me understand that phenomenon any more than before. If anything, to me, this election cycle gives black more reason than ever to not be Republican.

• Trump courts racists and has been since at least the early days of his campaign.
• Trump wants blacks to gamble on his "what the hell do you have to lose"
  
• What have Democrats done for blacks
  
• Trump goes out of his way to avoid blacks

Well, I'm not the only one who doesn't "get" it.

Perhaps because he’s now taking aim at an individual American citizen, Donald Trump’s attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage finally made it impossible to rationalize away the fundamentally racist nature of his campaign.

Republicans have tried, in part by squinting hard, to view his plans to raise a wall across the Mexican border and to ban Muslims from entering the country—which Trump doubled down on following the tragic events in Orlando—as policies focused on security, rather than group identity.

That’s a luxury of lax thinking few black Republicans have, and candidate Trump is forcing a reckoning for many of them.

“What are the Black Republicans supposed to do?” said Donald Scoggins, a lifelong Republican and the president of the Republicans for Black Empowerment, to The Daily Beast. “Donald Trump is really putting many Black Republicans in a terrible, terrible situation. We are basically a non-entity in the party right now.”

“Donald Trump wasn’t my first, second, third, or seventeenth choice,” said DeAndre Moore, a lifelong Republican.

For many black Republicans, who think it’s important that African Americans have a viable political alternative to the Democratic Party and want to apply the principles of fiscal and individual responsibility and accountability to impoverished segments of the community, Trump’s candidacy represents a tipping point.

The rise of the birther movement and Trump’s support of it could be dismissed as far-right radicals and a reality TV star talking nonsense and clogging up the airwaves, but not indicative of the mainstream GOP. New voter ID laws and voter suppression efforts could be rationalized as efforts to prevent (mostly imagined) voter fraud. Even the two attendees at the 2012 Republican National Convention who threw peanuts at an African American woman, while saying “this is how we feed the animals,” could be explained away as an outlier.

The RNC’s inaction on their Growth and Opportunity Project, which investigated how the party could do better with minorities following Mitt Romney’s 2012 drubbing, and the recent resignations of their black outreach staff, both frustrated the black Republicans I spoke with but after eight years of racially coded attacks, it is Trump’s rhetoric that has been the final straw.

“I don’t want to be associated with anything that has anything to do with Donald Trump,” said Hugh, one of several black Republicans I spoke with who didn’t want to use their full names out of fear of being excluded from their political communities.

One woman I spoke with expressed her frustration with how the rise of Sarah Palin and then Trump coincided with the rise and fall of Michael Steele as Chairman of the RNC. To her, this all indicated that the GOP preferred inarticulate, unqualified white Americans over well-spoken, experienced African Americans.

In talking with these black Republicans, all felt as though they are being forced to choose between their race and their party. Each said they don’t want to vote for Trump. Some have decided to vote for Hillary Clinton. Others may abstain from voting altogether. Several said that they intend to either purge this racist element from their party or leave it.

Unlike Speaker Paul Ryan, these voters see no way to denounce Trump’s statements as “the textbook definition of a racist comment” while continuing to support him.

They find solace in moderate Republicans like John Kasich, who has thus far refused to endorse Trump, and Mitt Romney who has consistently voiced his dislike of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. But the fact that both have been marginalized and unable to pose a legitimate challenge to Trump only demonstrated to them how dire the situation has become.

Many of Trump’s racist and dangerous comments are directed towards African Americans, but he couches these statements in coded language that encourages supporters to rationalize their racism away. Condoning his supporters beating up a protester who happens to be African American is not necessarily racist, but when he repeatedly encourages or tacitly endorses his supporters to violently confront and mistreat blacks and other minorities, it’s hard to miss the racism.

“You’re saying that about Mexicans, you’re saying that about me,” said Hugh.

“There is no way that you could even think about voting for someone with that type of language,” said Michelle of Virginia, who does not intend on voting for Trump. “Most Black Republicans behind the scenes will say no [to voting for Trump], and in front of the camera they will say yes.”

Trump is a continuation of the exclusionary social conservatism that most Black Republicans shun.

Many Black Republicans identify as conservative, and may personally oppose gay rights and abortion, but they also approve of the Great Society-era statutes outlawing racial discrimination. Their individual conservative beliefs do not equate to active support of policies that discriminate, harm, and marginalize minorities.

The paradox of the black Republican perspective often runs counter to Republican electoral strategies and impairs the GOP’s ability to appeal to minorities. Nixon’s Southern Strategy, which first won Republicans a virtual electoral lock on the South by using veiled, and not-so-veiled, racist attacks against minorities to appeal to white voters, remains a significant influencer in GOP electoral strategies, and Trump is clearly employing this playbook.

The black Republicans I spoke with see the rise of Trump as representing an era of hopelessness, and a return to the marginalization and social divisions that they aspired to overcome.

“I think the GOP has just gotten comfortable with not having the black vote,” said Moore. “As a black Republican, I’ll just say that this is a major embarrassment, total embarrassment. I’m trying to find something to give me some hope, but it is just not happening, obviously.”
​

So what gives? And mind you, I'm not looking for comparison-based or negativity-based explanations. I know what those reasons are, and they aren't unique to one's being black. What I want to know, ideally from black Republicans, is what about the GOP makes it a good party to belong to in general as well as for this election cycle?

Apparently you and the 95% of blacks that vote Democrat have looked at the results blacks have had by supporting Democrats. Blacks fall behind in many social, educational, economic categories where low isn't better. The same applies when they're higher than others and high isn't better.

Since blacks continue to vote Democrat despite the return they've been getting by doing so, tells me they either don't know how badly they've been used or they do but don't care as long as the pandering to them continues to occur. If they want to stay behind other groups in all sorts of categories, go ahead. They have no one to blame for it but themselves. If they want to blame slavery, they're putting themselves on the plantation now. Blame it.

Yes I'm sure they love that "plantation" talk. Carry on.

 

[Conservative65]

Ever since I have been old enough to understand politics to a pretty substantive degree, one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a Republican. This election cycle has done nothing at all to help me understand that phenomenon any more than before. If anything, to me, this election cycle gives black more reason than ever to not be Republican.

• Trump courts racists and has been since at least the early days of his campaign.
• Trump wants blacks to gamble on his "what the hell do you have to lose"
  
• What have Democrats done for blacks
  
• Trump goes out of his way to avoid blacks

Well, I'm not the only one who doesn't "get" it.

Perhaps because he’s now taking aim at an individual American citizen, Donald Trump’s attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage finally made it impossible to rationalize away the fundamentally racist nature of his campaign.

Republicans have tried, in part by squinting hard, to view his plans to raise a wall across the Mexican border and to ban Muslims from entering the country—which Trump doubled down on following the tragic events in Orlando—as policies focused on security, rather than group identity.

That’s a luxury of lax thinking few black Republicans have, and candidate Trump is forcing a reckoning for many of them.

“What are the Black Republicans supposed to do?” said Donald Scoggins, a lifelong Republican and the president of the Republicans for Black Empowerment, to The Daily Beast. “Donald Trump is really putting many Black Republicans in a terrible, terrible situation. We are basically a non-entity in the party right now.”

“Donald Trump wasn’t my first, second, third, or seventeenth choice,” said DeAndre Moore, a lifelong Republican.

For many black Republicans, who think it’s important that African Americans have a viable political alternative to the Democratic Party and want to apply the principles of fiscal and individual responsibility and accountability to impoverished segments of the community, Trump’s candidacy represents a tipping point.

The rise of the birther movement and Trump’s support of it could be dismissed as far-right radicals and a reality TV star talking nonsense and clogging up the airwaves, but not indicative of the mainstream GOP. New voter ID laws and voter suppression efforts could be rationalized as efforts to prevent (mostly imagined) voter fraud. Even the two attendees at the 2012 Republican National Convention who threw peanuts at an African American woman, while saying “this is how we feed the animals,” could be explained away as an outlier.

The RNC’s inaction on their Growth and Opportunity Project, which investigated how the party could do better with minorities following Mitt Romney’s 2012 drubbing, and the recent resignations of their black outreach staff, both frustrated the black Republicans I spoke with but after eight years of racially coded attacks, it is Trump’s rhetoric that has been the final straw.

“I don’t want to be associated with anything that has anything to do with Donald Trump,” said Hugh, one of several black Republicans I spoke with who didn’t want to use their full names out of fear of being excluded from their political communities.

One woman I spoke with expressed her frustration with how the rise of Sarah Palin and then Trump coincided with the rise and fall of Michael Steele as Chairman of the RNC. To her, this all indicated that the GOP preferred inarticulate, unqualified white Americans over well-spoken, experienced African Americans.

In talking with these black Republicans, all felt as though they are being forced to choose between their race and their party. Each said they don’t want to vote for Trump. Some have decided to vote for Hillary Clinton. Others may abstain from voting altogether. Several said that they intend to either purge this racist element from their party or leave it.

Unlike Speaker Paul Ryan, these voters see no way to denounce Trump’s statements as “the textbook definition of a racist comment” while continuing to support him.

They find solace in moderate Republicans like John Kasich, who has thus far refused to endorse Trump, and Mitt Romney who has consistently voiced his dislike of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. But the fact that both have been marginalized and unable to pose a legitimate challenge to Trump only demonstrated to them how dire the situation has become.

Many of Trump’s racist and dangerous comments are directed towards African Americans, but he couches these statements in coded language that encourages supporters to rationalize their racism away. Condoning his supporters beating up a protester who happens to be African American is not necessarily racist, but when he repeatedly encourages or tacitly endorses his supporters to violently confront and mistreat blacks and other minorities, it’s hard to miss the racism.

“You’re saying that about Mexicans, you’re saying that about me,” said Hugh.

“There is no way that you could even think about voting for someone with that type of language,” said Michelle of Virginia, who does not intend on voting for Trump. “Most Black Republicans behind the scenes will say no [to voting for Trump], and in front of the camera they will say yes.”

Trump is a continuation of the exclusionary social conservatism that most Black Republicans shun.

Many Black Republicans identify as conservative, and may personally oppose gay rights and abortion, but they also approve of the Great Society-era statutes outlawing racial discrimination. Their individual conservative beliefs do not equate to active support of policies that discriminate, harm, and marginalize minorities.

The paradox of the black Republican perspective often runs counter to Republican electoral strategies and impairs the GOP’s ability to appeal to minorities. Nixon’s Southern Strategy, which first won Republicans a virtual electoral lock on the South by using veiled, and not-so-veiled, racist attacks against minorities to appeal to white voters, remains a significant influencer in GOP electoral strategies, and Trump is clearly employing this playbook.

The black Republicans I spoke with see the rise of Trump as representing an era of hopelessness, and a return to the marginalization and social divisions that they aspired to overcome.

“I think the GOP has just gotten comfortable with not having the black vote,” said Moore. “As a black Republican, I’ll just say that this is a major embarrassment, total embarrassment. I’m trying to find something to give me some hope, but it is just not happening, obviously.”
​

So what gives? And mind you, I'm not looking for comparison-based or negativity-based explanations. I know what those reasons are, and they aren't unique to one's being black. What I want to know, ideally from black Republicans, is what about the GOP makes it a good party to belong to in general as well as for this election cycle?

Apparently you and the 95% of blacks that vote Democrat have looked at the results blacks have had by supporting Democrats. Blacks fall behind in many social, educational, economic categories where low isn't better. The same applies when they're higher than others and high isn't better.

Since blacks continue to vote Democrat despite the return they've been getting by doing so, tells me they either don't know how badly they've been used or they do but don't care as long as the pandering to them continues to occur. If they want to stay behind other groups in all sorts of categories, go ahead. They have no one to blame for it but themselves. If they want to blame slavery, they're putting themselves on the plantation now. Blame it.

Yes I'm sure they love that "plantation" talk. Carry on.

They should. Look at the results when it comes to poverty, education, IQ, bastard children, etc. They're worse off than all other groups, by far, and have been voting Democrat for 50 years on such a large scale. If they continue to vote Democrat despite knowing that, tells me they have no problem with the poor results. Even with one of they own as President, they're still falling behind. What have the Democrats done for them?

 

[320 Years of History]

I'm trying to figure this out. I really am fucking trying to figure out how you guys can keep on lying about Trump. He fucking broke the color and religious barriers in Palm Beach. THIS IS ON MOTHER FUCKING RECORD. He broke them with his club.

And you guys keep lying about him.

We have made enormous progress in teaching everyone that racism is bad. Where we seem to have dropped the ball… is in teaching people what racism actually IS.
-- Jon Stewart​

Red:

• Folks should adjudge that Trump isn't a racist because he is willing, in order to help generate and ensure the profits of his club at Mar-a-Lago (MaL) and at other places, to accept $100K+ from blacks and Jews, he is therefore not a racist?
• Because Trump finds that black and Jewish people's money looks just as good in his pocket as white folks' money, he's not a racist?
• When it's to him and everyone else as clear as day that (1) 40% of Palm Beach is Jewish and (2) the "Old Guard" (WASPs) of Palm Beach are disinclined to associate with and patronize him and his flashy ways to begin with, the road to finding local allies and members who can help make his MaL club successful is paved with Jewish members.

Those behaviors noted above are neither racist nor not "not racist." Do you think the Klansmen who lynched blacks didn't take their money because it had been possessed by black people? That Trump exhibited those behaviors is not a legitimate indicator of whether he is or is not a racist bigot. Why? Because while some racists had (have) a problem accepting money from minorities, more than a few never have. For example, segregated lunch counters and whatnot allowed racist and non-racist business owners to take money from both whites and blacks if that's what they needed to do to remain profitable.

I don't know what you know about rich and/or entrepreneurial post-Civil Rights racists. One thing I know about some of them is that regardless of whether they think one person is "as good" as another, their money sure is. That pretty succinctly describes one aspect of the type of racist Trump is: the racist that doesn't look like one under cursory examination.


Sidebar:

​

For folks who don't know how segregated lunch counters and restaurants worked, the photo above shows you. Whites got to sit and eat. Blacks were allowed carry-out only, which is, of course, why some protests of the 1960s were lunch counter sit-ins...sitting in and eating isn't what blacks were permitted to do. But the dining establishments didn't have issues with taking blacks money.

​

Jews, as one can tell from the sign above, also found themselves caught amidst the strangest admixture of American racist attitudes and discrimination. Jews usually have fair skin just as do WASPs, so they generally suffered no issues as they went about their daily lives, yet quotas kept most Jews out of elite universities, corporate jobs, private clubs, and restricted neighborhoods. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recalls that when she graduated from Columbia Law in 1959 at the top of her class, no one would hire her. "So there I was with three strikes against me: Jewish, woman and mother." Jews also were the owners and/or executives running quite a few retail empires -- Kahn's (Dallas), Kann's (D.C.) Neiman Marcus, Garfinkel's, Bergdorf's Sakowitz, I. Magnin, Bloomingdale's, etc. -- and they understood antisemitism and racism to be just different sides of one coin, so to speak.

Where did that confluence of circumstances leave Jews? Despised by whites for being Jewish. Despised by blacks for knowing their suffering and doing nothing about it. Rife with angst caused by the need to make money (which whites had plenty of and blacks didn't) and the moral and economic awareness that helping blacks helped them too.

How does that figure into Donald Trump's being? He grew up in the poshness of NYC around tons of Jews. There's not in the past 50 years a dearth of Jews on the Upper East and West Sides of NYC, which have been for ages and remain Trump's stomping grounds. The man has lived with Jews most of his life, and his daughter Ivanka is Jewish and married to a Jewish man. As a result, he clearly doesn't take exception with Jews, especially seeing as they are white.​

End of Sidebar.

 

[Wilbur Right]

For a man that took on Palm Beach and this is a big deal man. He flipped off all of them and then opened his doors.

Do you know what it took to flip them all off?

Yea, I know. It took a closet liberal to flip them off.

That's who you support; a closet liberal who won't do ANY of the Bullshit he said he would, like build that big fucking wall.
LMAO

 

[320 Years of History]

It's just tribal. Blacks are with Democrats even though Democrats screw them over, whites are with Republicans even though Republicans screw them over.

It's the racial identity that determines it. There will be some that cross lines, yes.

Since when does one damn thing absolve a bevy of racist acts and remarks made over a quarter of a century?

 

[DigitalDrifter]

Blacks = group think.

 

[Wilbur Right]

one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a democrat

You should try talking to a black person about your lack of understanding. You MIGHT learn something. But I doubt it.

 

[WheelieAddict]

Blacks = group think.

^Wonders why Blacks don't vote Republican.

 

[320 Years of History]

Apparently you and the 95% of blacks that vote Democrat have looked at the results blacks have had by supporting Democrats. Blacks fall behind in many social, educational, economic categories where low isn't better. The same applies when they're higher than others and high isn't better.

I'm sorry, but I don't know what you intend the second and third statements above to mean in context with the first one. I'll show you why not...

Broken down, what you've written is this:

I and black folks have looked at a set of results --> Blacks fall behind in areas where "low" isn't better --> Blacks also fall behind in areas where high isn't better.​

Hopefully my having broken it down for you helps you see the incoherence of that sequence of ideas that are all in one paragraph, yet have no real relation to each other. There is likely some idea (maybe a sentence's worth; maybe a paragraphs' worth, I don't know...) that you've left unstated and that rightly belongs between the first and second sentences to connect their ideas, but I have no way to tell what it may be. So that's why I'm asking you to clarify your remarks.

 

[Onyx]

Like other categories of people, the way black people are supposed to think has already been predetermined.

For those that can think for themselves, they cannot get behind conservative politics because they feel under attack by conservatives. They would not be wrong.

The rest are dependent on the government, and are content being served by liberal policies.

 

[320 Years of History]

Ever since I have been old enough to understand politics to a pretty substantive degree, one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a Republican. This election cycle has done nothing at all to help me understand that phenomenon any more than before. If anything, to me, this election cycle gives black more reason than ever to not be Republican.

• Trump courts racists and has been since at least the early days of his campaign.
• Trump wants blacks to gamble on his "what the hell do you have to lose"
  
• What have Democrats done for blacks
  
• Trump goes out of his way to avoid blacks

Well, I'm not the only one who doesn't "get" it.

Perhaps because he’s now taking aim at an individual American citizen, Donald Trump’s attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage finally made it impossible to rationalize away the fundamentally racist nature of his campaign.

Republicans have tried, in part by squinting hard, to view his plans to raise a wall across the Mexican border and to ban Muslims from entering the country—which Trump doubled down on following the tragic events in Orlando—as policies focused on security, rather than group identity.

That’s a luxury of lax thinking few black Republicans have, and candidate Trump is forcing a reckoning for many of them.

“What are the Black Republicans supposed to do?” said Donald Scoggins, a lifelong Republican and the president of the Republicans for Black Empowerment, to The Daily Beast. “Donald Trump is really putting many Black Republicans in a terrible, terrible situation. We are basically a non-entity in the party right now.”

“Donald Trump wasn’t my first, second, third, or seventeenth choice,” said DeAndre Moore, a lifelong Republican.

For many black Republicans, who think it’s important that African Americans have a viable political alternative to the Democratic Party and want to apply the principles of fiscal and individual responsibility and accountability to impoverished segments of the community, Trump’s candidacy represents a tipping point.

The rise of the birther movement and Trump’s support of it could be dismissed as far-right radicals and a reality TV star talking nonsense and clogging up the airwaves, but not indicative of the mainstream GOP. New voter ID laws and voter suppression efforts could be rationalized as efforts to prevent (mostly imagined) voter fraud. Even the two attendees at the 2012 Republican National Convention who threw peanuts at an African American woman, while saying “this is how we feed the animals,” could be explained away as an outlier.

The RNC’s inaction on their Growth and Opportunity Project, which investigated how the party could do better with minorities following Mitt Romney’s 2012 drubbing, and the recent resignations of their black outreach staff, both frustrated the black Republicans I spoke with but after eight years of racially coded attacks, it is Trump’s rhetoric that has been the final straw.

“I don’t want to be associated with anything that has anything to do with Donald Trump,” said Hugh, one of several black Republicans I spoke with who didn’t want to use their full names out of fear of being excluded from their political communities.

One woman I spoke with expressed her frustration with how the rise of Sarah Palin and then Trump coincided with the rise and fall of Michael Steele as Chairman of the RNC. To her, this all indicated that the GOP preferred inarticulate, unqualified white Americans over well-spoken, experienced African Americans.

In talking with these black Republicans, all felt as though they are being forced to choose between their race and their party. Each said they don’t want to vote for Trump. Some have decided to vote for Hillary Clinton. Others may abstain from voting altogether. Several said that they intend to either purge this racist element from their party or leave it.

Unlike Speaker Paul Ryan, these voters see no way to denounce Trump’s statements as “the textbook definition of a racist comment” while continuing to support him.

They find solace in moderate Republicans like John Kasich, who has thus far refused to endorse Trump, and Mitt Romney who has consistently voiced his dislike of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. But the fact that both have been marginalized and unable to pose a legitimate challenge to Trump only demonstrated to them how dire the situation has become.

Many of Trump’s racist and dangerous comments are directed towards African Americans, but he couches these statements in coded language that encourages supporters to rationalize their racism away. Condoning his supporters beating up a protester who happens to be African American is not necessarily racist, but when he repeatedly encourages or tacitly endorses his supporters to violently confront and mistreat blacks and other minorities, it’s hard to miss the racism.

“You’re saying that about Mexicans, you’re saying that about me,” said Hugh.

“There is no way that you could even think about voting for someone with that type of language,” said Michelle of Virginia, who does not intend on voting for Trump. “Most Black Republicans behind the scenes will say no [to voting for Trump], and in front of the camera they will say yes.”

Trump is a continuation of the exclusionary social conservatism that most Black Republicans shun.

Many Black Republicans identify as conservative, and may personally oppose gay rights and abortion, but they also approve of the Great Society-era statutes outlawing racial discrimination. Their individual conservative beliefs do not equate to active support of policies that discriminate, harm, and marginalize minorities.

The paradox of the black Republican perspective often runs counter to Republican electoral strategies and impairs the GOP’s ability to appeal to minorities. Nixon’s Southern Strategy, which first won Republicans a virtual electoral lock on the South by using veiled, and not-so-veiled, racist attacks against minorities to appeal to white voters, remains a significant influencer in GOP electoral strategies, and Trump is clearly employing this playbook.

The black Republicans I spoke with see the rise of Trump as representing an era of hopelessness, and a return to the marginalization and social divisions that they aspired to overcome.

“I think the GOP has just gotten comfortable with not having the black vote,” said Moore. “As a black Republican, I’ll just say that this is a major embarrassment, total embarrassment. I’m trying to find something to give me some hope, but it is just not happening, obviously.”
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So what gives? And mind you, I'm not looking for comparison-based or negativity-based explanations. I know what those reasons are, and they aren't unique to one's being black. What I want to know, ideally from black Republicans, is what about the GOP makes it a good party to belong to in general as well as for this election cycle?

Apparently you and the 95% of blacks that vote Democrat have looked at the results blacks have had by supporting Democrats. Blacks fall behind in many social, educational, economic categories where low isn't better. The same applies when they're higher than others and high isn't better.

Since blacks continue to vote Democrat despite the return they've been getting by doing so, tells me they either don't know how badly they've been used or they do but don't care as long as the pandering to them continues to occur. If they want to stay behind other groups in all sorts of categories, go ahead. They have no one to blame for it but themselves. If they want to blame slavery, they're putting themselves on the plantation now. Blame it.

Yes I'm sure they love that "plantation" talk. Carry on.

Did you actually understand that first paragraph? I damn sure didn't. If you think you did, HELP!

 

[WheelieAddict]

Like other categories of people, the way black people are supposed to think has already been predetermined.

For those that can think for themselves, they cannot get behind conservative politics because they feel under attack by conservatives. They would not be wrong.

The rest are dependent on the government, and are content being served by liberal policies.

Sums it up quite nicely. Conservatives refuse to believe blacks can actually think for themselves, because they don't vote the way they think they should.

 

[Onyx]

Like other categories of people, the way black people are supposed to think has already been predetermined.

For those that can think for themselves, they cannot get behind conservative politics because they feel under attack by conservatives. They would not be wrong.

The rest are dependent on the government, and are content being served by liberal policies.

Sums it up quite nicely. Conservatives refuse to believe blacks can actually think for themselves, because they don't vote the way they think they should.

Modern politics in general.

If an individual does not conform to your beliefs, then they are *insert deragatory label*

If a political party fails with an entire demographic, then supporters for that party generalize and discriminate against the entire group.

 

[owebo]

one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a democrat

You should try talking to a black person about your lack of understanding. You MIGHT learn something. But I doubt it.

I mentor black youth in STEM and I will tell you they are shocked to learn about you democrats and the historical and institutional racism of your democrat party....

I've enlightened many a black mind....how many have you enslaved?

 

[Onyx]

one thing that I just have not understood is the idea of a black person also being a democrat

You should try talking to a black person about your lack of understanding. You MIGHT learn something. But I doubt it.

I mentor black youth in STEM and I will tell you they are shocked to learn about you democrats and the historical and institutional racism of your democrat party....

I've enlightened many a black mind....how many have you enslaved?

Let's be fair here.

The old democratic party is closer in ideology to the current republican party, and vice versa.