Party Politics, Part I
It's the end of another work-day and I've been doing my usual search for things to blab on about, and in my pursuits, I came across this statement:
Frankly, neither party has been the friend of African-Americans. I mean, it's a purely relative thing. Republicans have ignored the plight of the poor and the colored since the 1960's, while the Democrats for the most part, could be seen as benign in their neglect of some of the larger issues affecting those of African descent. That said, it's true that advances were made under Republican administrations, but it is revisionist and disingenuous to suggest that there was anything altruistic about their actions. And in light of current and recent-past policy, it's hard to imagine Republicans being more friendly of those of color than... well, than anyone else.
The Civil War and Post-Bellum Period
The Grand Old Party loves to tout that Abraham Lincoln, "the great emancipator," was the savior of slaves. His Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 has come to symbolize Lincoln's greatness and abolitionist leanings. Lincoln was concerned with one thing: the maintenance of a "more perfect union," not two separate states.
The Proclamation was thought, at the time, to be a very risky maneuver, Lincoln only acceded to the Proclamation's precursor, the Second Confiscation Act, as a way to deny the Confederacy any legal standing under international law. You see, Union generals were taking slaves encountered during battle or travel as "contraband of war" (since slaves were considered chattel, and not people). Lincoln was concerned that at the cessation of hostilities, The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 would dictate that slaves were to be returned to their owners or that compensation had to be rendered. More importantly, holding slaves as contraband of war would tacitly imply that the US was at war with a separate, sovereign nation, rather than secessionists states, thus potentially dooming the Union in the eyes of the international community.
In fact, the history shows that the EP was designed accomplish two things: first, to avoid any suggestion that the CSA was a legitimate state, second, to break the economic backbone of the Conferderate States. Unionist believed that total war against the rebellion was required, and that emancipation would ruin the rebel economy. Lincoln was uninterested in the abolitionist cause, and had declared in peacetime that he had no constitutional authority to free the slaves, but the war gave him such powers. Thus, Lincoln issued the order not as a law, but as a presidential order as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Hmmm, where have we heard that phrase before?
In truth, it was the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, that finally freed the slaves.
Civil Rights Legislation
During the period of Civil unrest in the early to mid 1900's, the divide in race politics was generally based along geographic bounds. Northerners and westerners were generally in favor of enforcement of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the adoption of more expansive measures to ensure racial equality. Southerners, in great numbers, pined for the days of their lost confederacy.
Moving into the '50s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, did in fact support the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that held the separate-but-equa-doctrine in public school facilities and education was unconstitutional. He did in fact order then-governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus to allow the "Little Rock Nine" to attend the up-until-then segregated schools in that southern city. At best, Eisenhower would be considered a "gradualist," not exactly a compliment, but a recognition that he did move the state of the nation forward in an incremental fashion.
Eisenhower's vice president was a man by the name of Richard Milhous Nixon. He would lose the 1960 election to the future President John F. Kennedy. It is at this moment, following Nixon's '60 defeat, that the Republican party began it's steady slide to where it presently rests in terms of African-American support. Nixon would, however, win the presidency in 1968, breaking a Democratic party weakened by JFK's assassination in 1961, and defeating Kennedy's veep, Lyndon Johnson.
What made the Nixon victory interesting was that this was the first use of the now-famous Southern Strategy, an outline of which was articulated by Kevin Phillips, advisor to Nixon:
This rather interesting statement made me use the thing "sitting there on my neck." So, I sent a missive to the owner of the blackconservative.net site, a Lana Hampton, regarding her assertion and I await her response. More on that when it comes. In the meantime, I wanted to check the history and make sure that revisionist thinking hadn't crept into my recollection of the history of Civil Rights in America."Fact: The Republicans have a better record on civil rights than do the Democrats. It makes sense to support the party which brought us our freedom, our civil rights. Why support Democrats - the party which brought us the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow? Think! That thing sitting there on your neck is there for a purpose." - http://www.blackconservative.net/RepublicansCivilRights.html
Frankly, neither party has been the friend of African-Americans. I mean, it's a purely relative thing. Republicans have ignored the plight of the poor and the colored since the 1960's, while the Democrats for the most part, could be seen as benign in their neglect of some of the larger issues affecting those of African descent. That said, it's true that advances were made under Republican administrations, but it is revisionist and disingenuous to suggest that there was anything altruistic about their actions. And in light of current and recent-past policy, it's hard to imagine Republicans being more friendly of those of color than... well, than anyone else.
The Civil War and Post-Bellum Period
The Grand Old Party loves to tout that Abraham Lincoln, "the great emancipator," was the savior of slaves. His Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 has come to symbolize Lincoln's greatness and abolitionist leanings. Lincoln was concerned with one thing: the maintenance of a "more perfect union," not two separate states.
The Proclamation was thought, at the time, to be a very risky maneuver, Lincoln only acceded to the Proclamation's precursor, the Second Confiscation Act, as a way to deny the Confederacy any legal standing under international law. You see, Union generals were taking slaves encountered during battle or travel as "contraband of war" (since slaves were considered chattel, and not people). Lincoln was concerned that at the cessation of hostilities, The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 would dictate that slaves were to be returned to their owners or that compensation had to be rendered. More importantly, holding slaves as contraband of war would tacitly imply that the US was at war with a separate, sovereign nation, rather than secessionists states, thus potentially dooming the Union in the eyes of the international community.
In fact, the history shows that the EP was designed accomplish two things: first, to avoid any suggestion that the CSA was a legitimate state, second, to break the economic backbone of the Conferderate States. Unionist believed that total war against the rebellion was required, and that emancipation would ruin the rebel economy. Lincoln was uninterested in the abolitionist cause, and had declared in peacetime that he had no constitutional authority to free the slaves, but the war gave him such powers. Thus, Lincoln issued the order not as a law, but as a presidential order as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Hmmm, where have we heard that phrase before?
In truth, it was the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, that finally freed the slaves.
Civil Rights Legislation
During the period of Civil unrest in the early to mid 1900's, the divide in race politics was generally based along geographic bounds. Northerners and westerners were generally in favor of enforcement of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the adoption of more expansive measures to ensure racial equality. Southerners, in great numbers, pined for the days of their lost confederacy.
Moving into the '50s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, did in fact support the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that held the separate-but-equa-doctrine in public school facilities and education was unconstitutional. He did in fact order then-governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus to allow the "Little Rock Nine" to attend the up-until-then segregated schools in that southern city. At best, Eisenhower would be considered a "gradualist," not exactly a compliment, but a recognition that he did move the state of the nation forward in an incremental fashion.
Eisenhower's vice president was a man by the name of Richard Milhous Nixon. He would lose the 1960 election to the future President John F. Kennedy. It is at this moment, following Nixon's '60 defeat, that the Republican party began it's steady slide to where it presently rests in terms of African-American support. Nixon would, however, win the presidency in 1968, breaking a Democratic party weakened by JFK's assassination in 1961, and defeating Kennedy's veep, Lyndon Johnson.
What made the Nixon victory interesting was that this was the first use of the now-famous Southern Strategy, an outline of which was articulated by Kevin Phillips, advisor to Nixon:
In retrospect, it was the Kennedy administration which fully and completely wrested the African-American vote from the Republican party, and in response the Republican party then became what southern Dems, "the Dixiecrats," were before them. Phillips and Nixon, who desperately wanted to be president, were concerned with polarizing ethnic voting, not just with winning the white South. His ideas would give rise to the "state's rights" movement and "decentralized government" positions of today's Republican candidates.
- "From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."
From 1948 to 1984 the Southern states, once solidly Dixiecratic, became key swing states, providing the popular vote margins in '60, '68, and '76. Ronald Reagan, who won the Republican nomination for president in 1979, began his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi -- site of the brutal murder of three civil rights workers 12 years prior -- with a speech declaring his support for "states rights'." The states rights' mantra had been used by southern states all the way back to the Civil War in their belief that the federal system of government entitled them to self-determination, specifically with reference to racial equality and more specifically the keeping of slaves. While perhaps personally race-neutral, (possibly even progressive) the policies and politics of Race in the Reagan administration sealed the fate of Republicans with relation to black voters and solidified the Southern Strategy as the defining political playbook for the following 20 years.
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So, the moral of the story is that black folks need to use "that thing sitting there on [our] neck[s]" for critical thinking and unbiased examination of the facts...not for whatever Lana Hampton uses hers for. Kids, don't try this at home...
I am anxiously awaiting your take on her response to your missive...
Absolutely, we have to be fully informed about the history of the parties we affiliate with, but more importantly, we need to cognizant of the policies of the individuals we cast our ballots for.
An uninformed electorate is a politician's best friend. In part two of my GOP review, I'll tackle more current Republican positions and personalities.