- Mar 11, 2015
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We have so many whites here who are self declared experts on black people. Yet they are clueless. There is a reason why todays black conservative republican gets hammered. And it is because they do not represent the proud history of what black republicans have really stood for. Calling a great black person of the past a republican like they would support the republican party of today is another example of the long line of conflations, distortions and false equivalences we so often see by the racist whites who are part of this forum.
The Forgotten History of Black Republicans(excerpts)
Leah Wright Rigueur
Second, the GOP of today bears little resemblance to the âParty of Lincolnâ to which black voters had been fiercely loyal since the era of Reconstruction. Instead, the modern Republican Party is indelibly associated with Herbert Hooverâs âlily-whiteâ movement, âOperation Dixieâ of the 1950s, and Richard Nixonâs âsouthern strategy.â It is a party whose 1964 presidential candidate voted against the landmark Civil Rights Act passed in that year, and whose 1980 nominee launched his official presidential campaign with a now-infamous âstatesâ rightsâ speech in Philadelphia, Mississippiâthe town in which three civil rights workers were murdered sixteen years earlier.
A black Republican, the Pittsburgh Courier spat in 1992, âis a kind of bogeyman dressed in a Black tailored suit or immaculate silk dress, to cajole Blacks into believing the Republican Party and its brand of conservatism is a trumpet-tongued angel playing the jazz of economic salvation and racial harmony.â Such music, the black newspaper criticized, âis nothing more than bubbles of gas emanating from the butt of reptiles.â However, as we shall see, the âsongsâ of black Republicans are far more complicated and multivocal.
In contrast, white Republicans often heap gratuitous public praise on African American members of the GOP, applauding them for having the gumption to leave the âplantation politics of the Democratic Party,â as Pat Buchanan did on CNN in 2011, while defending Herman Cain. This line of thinking stems from the flawed and simplistic belief that African Americans have been brainwashed into voting for the Democratic Party and, as a result, ignore the benefits of belonging to the GOP. The trope of the Democratic Party as a slave plantation has been a recurring feature of GOP rhetoric since at least 1968, when Richard Nixon mentioned it in an interview with Jet magazine; predating even this, black Republicans have used the phrase regularly since 1964. Such thinking is problematicâoften condescending and occasionally even bigoted, insinuating that Democrats have âboughtâ the black vote with âgovernment handouts,â and that African Americans are therefore unable to make their own rational political choices, thereby sidestepping the GOPâs role in repelling black voters.
Exploring black politics over nearly half a century, disrupts many of our perceptions about African Americans who support the GOP; at times we find not a peculiar group of blacks, desperate for white acceptance or out of touch with American realities but rather a movement of African Americans working for an alternative economic and civil rights movement. At other moments, we see a cadre of figures who make cynical concessions in order to maintain a modicum of power.
There were three different waves of national black Republican thought and activity, a period that begins in 1936âsignificant not only for the major political realignment of African American voters but also for the remarkable voting fluidity of the black electorate (see tables 1â3 in the appendix); in fact, through 1962, nearly a third of black voters pulled the lever for Republican candidates in midterm and presidential elections. The decision to nominate Barry Goldwater as the GOP presidential nominee in 1964 marks the beginning of the next wave of black party activity, as the Arizona senatorâs right-wing agenda sent shock- waves through black Republicansâ ranks, motivating them to organize on a national scale in pursuit of intraparty reform.
The Forgotten History of Black Republicans(excerpts)
Leah Wright Rigueur
Second, the GOP of today bears little resemblance to the âParty of Lincolnâ to which black voters had been fiercely loyal since the era of Reconstruction. Instead, the modern Republican Party is indelibly associated with Herbert Hooverâs âlily-whiteâ movement, âOperation Dixieâ of the 1950s, and Richard Nixonâs âsouthern strategy.â It is a party whose 1964 presidential candidate voted against the landmark Civil Rights Act passed in that year, and whose 1980 nominee launched his official presidential campaign with a now-infamous âstatesâ rightsâ speech in Philadelphia, Mississippiâthe town in which three civil rights workers were murdered sixteen years earlier.
A black Republican, the Pittsburgh Courier spat in 1992, âis a kind of bogeyman dressed in a Black tailored suit or immaculate silk dress, to cajole Blacks into believing the Republican Party and its brand of conservatism is a trumpet-tongued angel playing the jazz of economic salvation and racial harmony.â Such music, the black newspaper criticized, âis nothing more than bubbles of gas emanating from the butt of reptiles.â However, as we shall see, the âsongsâ of black Republicans are far more complicated and multivocal.
In contrast, white Republicans often heap gratuitous public praise on African American members of the GOP, applauding them for having the gumption to leave the âplantation politics of the Democratic Party,â as Pat Buchanan did on CNN in 2011, while defending Herman Cain. This line of thinking stems from the flawed and simplistic belief that African Americans have been brainwashed into voting for the Democratic Party and, as a result, ignore the benefits of belonging to the GOP. The trope of the Democratic Party as a slave plantation has been a recurring feature of GOP rhetoric since at least 1968, when Richard Nixon mentioned it in an interview with Jet magazine; predating even this, black Republicans have used the phrase regularly since 1964. Such thinking is problematicâoften condescending and occasionally even bigoted, insinuating that Democrats have âboughtâ the black vote with âgovernment handouts,â and that African Americans are therefore unable to make their own rational political choices, thereby sidestepping the GOPâs role in repelling black voters.
Exploring black politics over nearly half a century, disrupts many of our perceptions about African Americans who support the GOP; at times we find not a peculiar group of blacks, desperate for white acceptance or out of touch with American realities but rather a movement of African Americans working for an alternative economic and civil rights movement. At other moments, we see a cadre of figures who make cynical concessions in order to maintain a modicum of power.
There were three different waves of national black Republican thought and activity, a period that begins in 1936âsignificant not only for the major political realignment of African American voters but also for the remarkable voting fluidity of the black electorate (see tables 1â3 in the appendix); in fact, through 1962, nearly a third of black voters pulled the lever for Republican candidates in midterm and presidential elections. The decision to nominate Barry Goldwater as the GOP presidential nominee in 1964 marks the beginning of the next wave of black party activity, as the Arizona senatorâs right-wing agenda sent shock- waves through black Republicansâ ranks, motivating them to organize on a national scale in pursuit of intraparty reform.
The Forgotten History of Black Republicans
The Black Republican in modern politics is most often depicted either as a traitor to be scorned or misguided.
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