Damn Uncle Toms

[sirs]

Don't they know their place?

Black Hopefuls Pick This Year in G.O.P. Races
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: May 4, 2010Among the many reverberations of President Obama?s election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials.

The House has not had a black Republican since 2003, when J. C. Watts of Oklahoma left after eight years.

But now black Republicans are running across the country ? from a largely white swath of beach communities in Florida to the suburbs of Phoenix, where an African-American candidate has raised more money than all but two of his nine (white) Republican competitors in the primary.

Party officials and the candidates themselves acknowledge that they still have uphill fights in both the primaries and the general elections, but they say that black Republicans are running with a confidence they have never had before. They credit the marriage of two factors: dissatisfaction with the Obama administration, and the proof, as provided by Mr. Obama, that blacks can get elected.

?I ran in 2008 and raised half a million dollars, and the state party didn?t support me and the national party didn?t support me,? said Allen West, who is running for Congress in Florida and is one of roughly five black candidates the party believes could win. ?But we came back and we?re running and things are looking great.?

But interviews with many of the candidates suggest that they felt empowered by Mr. Obama?s election, that it made them realize that what had once seemed impossible ? for a black candidate to win election with substantial white support ? was not.

?There is no denying that one of the things that came out of the election of Obama was that you have a lot of African-Americans running in both parties now,? said Vernon Parker, who is running for an open seat in Arizona?s Third District. His competition in the Aug. 24 primary includes the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, Ben Quayle.

Princella Smith, who is running for an open seat in Arkansas, said she viewed the president?s victory through both the lens of history and partisan politics. ?Aside from the fact that I disagree fundamentally with all his views, I am proud of my nation for proving that we have the ability to do something like that,? Ms. Smith said.

State and national party officials say that this year?s cast of black Republicans is far more experienced than the more fringy players of yore, and include elected officials, former military personnel and candidates who have run before.

Mr. Parker is the mayor of Paradise Valley, Ariz. Ryan Frazier is a councilman in Aurora, Colo., one of four at-large members who represent the whole city. And Tim Scott is the only black Republican elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives since Reconstruction.

?These are not just people pulled out of the hole,? said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a black conservative group. That is ?the nice thing about being on this side of history,? he said.

He added that the candidates might be helped by the presence of Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee who is black and ran for the Senate himself in 2006.

?Party affiliation is not a barrier to inspiration,? Mr. Steele said in an e-mail message. ?Certainly, the president?s election was and remains an inspiration to many.?

But Democrats and other political experts express skepticism about black Republicans? chances in November. ?In 1994 and 2000, there were 24 black G.O.P. nominees,? said Donna Brazile, a Democratic political strategist who ran Al Gore?s presidential campaign and who is black. ?And you didn?t see many of them win their elections.?

Tavis Smiley, a prominent black talk show host who has repeatedly criticized Republicans for not doing more to court black voters, said, ?It?s worth remembering that the last time it was declared the ?Year of the Black Republican,? it fizzled out.?

In many ways, this subset of Republicans is latching on to the basic themes propelling most of their party?s campaigns this year ? the call for smaller government, less spending and stronger national security ? rather than building platforms around social conservatism.

?Things have evolved,? said Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, who is heavily involved in recruiting Republican candidates. ?I think partly the level of hostility to Obama, Pelosi and Reid makes a lot of people pragmatically more open to a coalition from the standpoint of being a long-term majority party.?

Many of the candidates are trying to align themselves with the Tea Partiers, insisting that the racial dynamics of that movement have been overblown. Videos taken at some Tea Party rallies show some participants holding up signs with racially inflammatory language.

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that 25 percent of self-identified Tea Party supporters think that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites, compared with 11 percent of the general public.

The black candidates interviewed overwhelmingly called the racist narrative a news media fiction. ?I have been to these rallies, and there are hot dogs and banjos,? said Mr. West, the candidate in Florida, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army. ?There is no violence or racism there.?

There is also some evidence that black voters rally around specific conservative causes. A case in point was a 2008 ballot initiative in California outlawing same-sex marriage that passed in large part because of support from black voters in Southern California.

Still, black Republicans face a double hurdle: black Democrats who are disinclined to back them in a general election, and incongruity with white Republicans, who sometimes do not welcome the blacks whom party officials claim to covet as new members.

This spring, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia was roundly attacked for not mentioning slavery in his Confederate History Month proclamation, which he later said was a ?major omission.? Black candidates said these types of gaffes posed problems in drawing African-Americans to their party, but also underscored their need to be there.

?I think what the governor failed to do was to recognize the pain and the emotion that was really sparked by the institution of slavery,? said Mr. Frazier of Colorado. ?As a Republican, I think I have a responsibility to continue to work within my party to avoid those types of barriers. The key for the Republican Party is to engage every community on the issues they care about and not act as if they don?t exist.?

[sirs]

Having recently reached 74 years of age, if one were to ask me what's my greatest disappointment in life, a top contender would surely be the level of misunderstanding, perhaps contempt, that black Americans have for the principles of personal liberty and their abiding faith in government. Contempt or misunderstanding of the principles of personal liberty and faith in government by no means make blacks unique among Americans, but the unique history of black Americans should make us, above all other Americans, most suspicious of any encroachment on personal liberty and most distrustful of government. Let's look at it.

The most serious injustices suffered by blacks came at the hands of government, at different levels, failure to protect personal liberty.

Slavery was only the most egregious example of that failure. Congress and the courts supported the injustice of slavery through the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision. After emancipation, there were government-enforced Jim Crow laws denying blacks basic liberties and court decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson that reinforced and gave sanction to private acts that abridged black people's liberties.

The heroic civil rights movement, culminating with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, put an end to the grossest abuses of personal liberties, but government evolved into a subtler enemy. Visit any major city and one would find that the overwhelmingly law-abiding members of the black community are living in constant fear of robbery, assault and murder. In fact, 52 percent of U.S. homicides are committed by blacks, 49 percent of homicide victims are black and 93 percent of them were murdered by fellow blacks.

The level of crime in black communities is the result of government's failure to perform its most basic function, namely the protection of its citizens. The level of criminal activity not only puts residents in physical jeopardy but represents a heavy tax on people least able to bear it. That tax is paid in the forms of higher prices for goods and services and fewer shopping opportunities because supermarkets and other large retailers are reluctant to bear the costs of doing business in high-crime areas. This government failure has the full effect of a law prohibiting economic development in many black communities.

Then there's the grossly fraudulent education delivered by the government schools that serve most black communities. The average black high school senior has a sixth- or seventh-grade achievement level and most of those who manage to graduate have what's no less than a fraudulent diploma, one that certifies a 12th-grade level of achievement when in fact the youngster might not have half that. If the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to sabotage black academic excellence, he could not find a more effective means to do so than the government school system in most cities.

Tragically, most Americans, including black people whose ancestors have suffered from gross injustices of slavery, think it quite proper for government to forcibly use one person to serve the purposes of another. That's precisely what income redistribution is: the practice of forcibly taking the fruits of one person's labor for the benefit of another. That's also what theft is and the practice differs from slavery only in degree but not kind.

What about blacks who cherish liberty and limited government and joined in the tea party movement, or blacks who are members of organizations such as the Lincoln Institute, Frederick Douglass Foundation and Project 21? They've been maligned as Oreos, Uncle Toms and traitors to their race. To make such a charge borders on stupidity, possibly racism. After all, when President Reagan disagreed with Tip O'Neill, did either charge the other with being a traitor to his race? Then why is it deemed traitorous when one black disagrees with another, unless you think that all blacks must think alike?

I hope it's misunderstanding, rather than contempt, that explains black hostility toward the principles of liberty.


Black Americans and Liberty