- Mar 11, 2015
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Here, let a conservative explain to you why blacks are not republicans.
Why Aren’t There More Black Republicans?
Conservatives must embrace the GOP’s once proud legacy on civil rights.
By Musa Al-Gharbi
Today up to 95 percent of African-American voters are aligned with the Democratic Party, and the GOP has largely abandoned its legacy of civil rights activism.
It’s tough to assert being the party of Lincoln while some Republican legislators court Neo-Confederates and other ethnic nationalist movements. They further distance themselves by advocating for voter ID laws, which disenfranchise primarily low-income and legal minority voters. (There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud by illegal or ineligible voters, let alone a single example of when such voting has actually turned an election).
It is similarly difficult for Republicans to trumpet their role in passing Civil Rights Acts while the Republican National Committee is spearheading efforts to dismantle affirmative action (Former GOP chairman Michael Steele struck a good balance on this). And perhaps most importantly, the conservative emphasis on personal responsibility sounds disingenuous to many blacks when Republicans refuse to acknowledge the profound and continuing effects of slavery, Jim Crow and segregation—let alone the persistence of overt racism, institutional and systemic discrimination, and unconscious racial bias.
There is an assumption that these issues do not need to be addressed head-on because a strong economy will raise up all Americans. Hence Republicans focus on fiscal matters over social justice. But if a particular social arrangement fundamentally privileges one group or marginalizes others, then economic growth tends to exacerbate disparities between groups rather than “lifting all boats.” Or put another way, a system has to be fair before it can be color blind.
Diversity v. Tokenism
During virtually every election cycle, the RNC goes out of its way to elevate some black candidate onto the national stage. But diversity isn’t about seeing an African American advocating the exact same positions as their white counterparts. Instead, with often dramatically different life experiences, one would expect substantive differences in how black candidates view and approach policy problems. Yet most of the black voices elevated by the Republican Party reflect little of this more meaningful diversity—and to make matters worse, they aren’t strong candidates to begin with.
Why Aren’t There More Black Republicans?
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