- Mar 11, 2015
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There was once a time when blacks were republicans. These blacks were not Clarence Thomas or Ben Carson. They fought white racism instead of validating it. But something changed about 90 years ago whereby events led blacks to leave the party.
The Forgotten History of Black Republicans
Leah Wright Rigueur
Why would an African American join the Republican Party? The question is an old one, an ubiquitous inquiry that many people, Democrats and Republicans alike, have posed consistently since the 1930sâthe decade when black voters first began to flee the Republican Party, then known as the âParty of Lincoln,â an ideological home so very different from what âRepublicanâ means today.
âSince President Franklin and the New Deal,â wrote the editors at the Chicago De- fender in 1976, âbeing black and Republican was about as compatible as being black and aspiring to leadership in the Ku Klux Klan.â
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. As politicians shaped the GOP from the âtop down,â ordinary white city dwellers and suburbanites from all backgrounds and income levels along with an âarmyâ of conservative activists, influenced the direction of the GOP from the grass roots, reacting to changing social and cultural norms, the liberalism of the civil rights movement and the radicalism of Black Power. In short, the GOP is a party whose conservatism, to to quote Robert Smith and Hanes Walton, seems to make it âvirtually impossible for blacks, given their history and condition,â to accept.
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.
Most of these black party members joined the Republican Party (or never left it) out of a belief in what they called âtraditionalâ conservatism: anticommunism, free market enterprise and capitalism, self-help and personal responsibility, limited government intervention, and a respect for authority, history, and precedent, along with Western institutions and traditions. In this sense, their beliefs were aligned with those of their white counterparts; and like their white counterparts, black Republicansâ traditional conservatism also reflected their dissatisfaction with the Democratic liberalism of the New Deal and the Great Society. Reflecting the political diversity of the Republican Party more generally, there were three broad wings of black Republican thought, a great ideological gamut that encompassed liberal, moderate, and conservative factions. Equally importantâand especially baffling to criticsâmost black Republicans, regardless of their ideological differences, believed that racial egalitarianism was in keeping with the Republican Partyâs principles. Indeed, the majority believed that in times of crisis, the government had a right to intervene on behalf of the nationâs citizens; consequently, African American party membersâ traditional conservatism often included a belief in federal intervention in specific matters of civil rights and racial equality.
The Forgotten History of Black Republicans
https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/leah-wright-rigueur
The Forgotten History of Black Republicans
Leah Wright Rigueur
Why would an African American join the Republican Party? The question is an old one, an ubiquitous inquiry that many people, Democrats and Republicans alike, have posed consistently since the 1930sâthe decade when black voters first began to flee the Republican Party, then known as the âParty of Lincoln,â an ideological home so very different from what âRepublicanâ means today.
âSince President Franklin and the New Deal,â wrote the editors at the Chicago De- fender in 1976, âbeing black and Republican was about as compatible as being black and aspiring to leadership in the Ku Klux Klan.â
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. As politicians shaped the GOP from the âtop down,â ordinary white city dwellers and suburbanites from all backgrounds and income levels along with an âarmyâ of conservative activists, influenced the direction of the GOP from the grass roots, reacting to changing social and cultural norms, the liberalism of the civil rights movement and the radicalism of Black Power. In short, the GOP is a party whose conservatism, to to quote Robert Smith and Hanes Walton, seems to make it âvirtually impossible for blacks, given their history and condition,â to accept.
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.
Most of these black party members joined the Republican Party (or never left it) out of a belief in what they called âtraditionalâ conservatism: anticommunism, free market enterprise and capitalism, self-help and personal responsibility, limited government intervention, and a respect for authority, history, and precedent, along with Western institutions and traditions. In this sense, their beliefs were aligned with those of their white counterparts; and like their white counterparts, black Republicansâ traditional conservatism also reflected their dissatisfaction with the Democratic liberalism of the New Deal and the Great Society. Reflecting the political diversity of the Republican Party more generally, there were three broad wings of black Republican thought, a great ideological gamut that encompassed liberal, moderate, and conservative factions. Equally importantâand especially baffling to criticsâmost black Republicans, regardless of their ideological differences, believed that racial egalitarianism was in keeping with the Republican Partyâs principles. Indeed, the majority believed that in times of crisis, the government had a right to intervene on behalf of the nationâs citizens; consequently, African American party membersâ traditional conservatism often included a belief in federal intervention in specific matters of civil rights and racial equality.
The Forgotten History of Black Republicans
https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/leah-wright-rigueur
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