Virginia Fuller’s district is 47% black, 43% white but heavily Democrat...not overwhelmingly black.
47% black is OVERWHELMLY black statistically. It's a problem. It's NOT racism because the Repub party is NOMINATING AND SUPPORTING them in their districts.. It's political choice... And then gamesmanship and nose thumbing when predominantly black voters BORK qualified black Repubs in their districts... That's why the party lives IN FEAR of their voters leaving the plantation...
There's SMALL chances for qualified/willing blacks to run in over-weighted white districts.. But if they are less than 3 or 5% of the voting public -- having one declare is a unicorn experience...
We're more segregated by choice in this country than most people realize... Or will admit.. On EITHER side of black/white..
BS. Black republicans lose local elections because what republicans have for a platform generally does not fit the needs of those they represent. And if you think a black republican freshman in congress is going to have any say, think again. And quit using that ******* racist claim about a plantation, that's another reason why we don't vote republican. You are disingenuous. I am black, andI know why blacks don't vote republican. What you might consider as qualified for blacks is not what we might consider qualified. The republican party has a history of broken promises to us.
The racism inherent in much of the current republican base allows a failure to understand that blacks are able to think critically and make decisions without white input. We know what republicans have done. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Rutherford Hayes, a republican, ended reconstruction. We had the republican lily white movement to purge blacks from the party. Republicans endorsed separate but equal, every republican administration in the early to mid 1900's broke promises made to blacks, most notably during the Great Mississippi flood, which resulted in massive black casualties, displacement and basically returning southern blacks back to slave status.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States. Twenty-seven thousand square miles of the United States was under water up to 30 feet deep. Because of this flood, the federal government built the system of levees and floodways we see along the Mississippi River today. More than 200,000 African Americans were displaced from their homes along the Mississippi and had to live for lengthy periods in “relief camps.” Calling them relief camps is overly kind as supplies and means of evacuation after flooding were given to primarily to whites. Blacks got whatever was left. African Americans could not receive supplies without providing the name of a white employer or a voucher from somebody white. Blacks were made to work against their will and were not allowed to leave. In some discussions it has been said that blacks were put in concentration camps. Whether or not that is true, blacks were subject to dangerous and inhumane conditions.
Walter White, then the president of the NAACP visited the Mississippi delta. When he returned to New York he had some very choice words for the conditions he saw that blacks had to endure. “
Negroes in hundreds of cases were forced to work at the point of guns on the levees long after it was certain that the levees would break. Conscripted Negro labor did practically all of the hard and dangerous work in fighting the flood. Harrowing as many of these stories are, they are the almost inevitable products of a gigantic catastrophe and are part of the normal picture of the industrial and race situation in certain parts of the South. The greatest and most significant injustice is in the denial to Negroes of the right of free movement and of the privilege of selling their services to the highest bidder. That, if persisted in, would recreate and crystallize a new slavery almost as miserable as the old.” White called the facilities the federal troops used to hold until their employers could claim them concentration camps.
Whites report as well as others caught the attention of Herbert Hoover who was serving as Secretary of Commerce. Hoover was charged with the responsibility of flood relief. In classic racist fashion without white oversight, the report from a black person on the condition they saw other blacks enduring would not be good enough for the whites in charge. So Hoover decided he needed to create a Colored Advisory Committee. This committee was appointed to investigate the NAACP’s complaints. The Colored Advisory Committee was chaired by Tuskegee Institute president Robert Moton, with eleven other people from Tuskegee serving as as committee members. Hoover was using black conservatives in hopes that what the came from the Booker T Washington side would be less critical and could be used to discredit the drilling the federal government took from the NAACP. Once again, the Washington philosophy failed black Americans in spectacular fashion.
I think it’s important to know who Robert Moton is. Moton is a very consequential figure in black political history. His political story is a cautionary tale for current blacks who call themselves conservative but whose beliefs align with right wing white racial extremists. His life story shows a fact of slavery that some whites purposefully leave out of the tale of how blacks sold each other into slavery.
Moton was born in 1867. His father had been a wealthy African Chieftain that got rich by selling slaves. That is until he was sold into slavery. Moton graduated from Hampton Institute in 1890. When Booker T. Washington died in 1915, Moton succeeded Washington as President of Tuskegee. During his time at Tuskegee, Moton expanded the curriculum at Tuskegee to include liberal arts. However, during his time Moton allowed the Tuskegee Experiment to be conducted. Moton by all standards was an impressive man, but he had one flaw, his belief in accommodation.
Like Washington, Moton believed that the best way to advance the cause of African Americans was to convince white people of black people's worth. He didn't fight segregation or challenge white authority. Moton sat on the boards of major philanthropies with the likes of Carnegie and Rockefeller
. It is not overstating that Moton held great influence in the America of that period. Such is why Hoover used him to Chair the Colored Advisory Committee. I describe this as using because that’s exactly what Hoover did.
After the NAACP roasted the government, Hoover who had his eye on the presidency, was told by advisors to get “the big negroes” in to quiet the criticism. Hoover then appoints Moton. The Committee goes to investigate the situation in Mississippi. Members of the committee returned with a very detailed report for Moton on the conditions blacks endured including the things detailed by the NAACP. From
The Final Report of the Colored Advisory Commission:
"The camps in which we found the most satisfactory conditions were those where the local colored people have had an opportunity to assist in the administration of affairs. The camps which were found to be especially good were: Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Natchez . . . In the camps at Greenville, Sicily Island and Opelousas, the colored people had practically no part in the activities of the colored refugees."
The commission reported that at Greenville whites came and went at will without passes while blacks were not given the same freedom. Blacks also told the commission about rough treatment along with discrimination regarding labor conditions and the ability to get food. Moton presented the findings of the commission to Hoover and advocated for immediate assistance to those most in need. Hoover asked Moton to not let information contained in the commission report be leaked to the public. So Moton kept the findings from the public. In return for doing that, Hoover hinted to Moton that if he got elected president, Moton and his people would be part of the Hoover administration. Hoover also implied that as president he would to divide the land of planters bankrupted from the flood into African American-owned farms.
Because of these promises, Moton made sure that Commission did not leak the full story of what they saw and were told by blacks who were suffering mightily in the Mississippi delta. Moton then pumped up the Hoover's candidacy in the African American community. Once he was elected President in 1928, Hoover turned into Sgt. Schultz and knew nothing about the promises he made to Moton and the black community. To quote Ice Cube, Moton got, “fucked out of his green by a white boy with no Vaseline.” In 1932 Moton ended being accommodating and when he finished, the damage he did to the republican party has lasted to this very day. Moton withdrew his support for Hoover and switched to the Democratic Party. His move created a historic shift as African Americans began to abandon the Republicans Party, the party of Lincoln, the party of the Emancipation Proclamation, and turned to the Democratic Party.
But a few stragglers stayed faithful to the Republican party still after 70 years of the party ignoring blacks and breaking promises. Until 1964. That was when a democrat signed what amounted to our second Emancipation Proclamation when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. Members of todays republican party spin a disingenuous tale about republican support for the Civil Rights and voting rights act. They tell about a democratic filibuster and will tell us that more democrats opposed these bills than republicans. These things are true. But they only tell part of the story. According to Merriam-Webster the definition of disingenuous is,
“lacking in candor: giving a false appearance of simple frankness.” In the house, 221 democrats voted for the Voting Rights Act, 112 republicans did. In the senate, 47 democrats voted for the Voting Rights Act, 30 republicans did.
1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. By 1964 there were blacks whose families had been republicans for almost 100 years. The Goldwater nomination was a slap in the face of black people. When we got civil rights, republicans decided that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, turned their backs on us and began letting southern white racists become part of the party. So just cut the crap. The history of the republican party is one of broken promises to black people and that is why we aren't republicans today.
