Race and gender are significant factors in the United States. Not surprisingly, people are sometimes pulled one way by their political values and another by their race or gender concerns. The Republicans are hoping to cash in on the gender pull exerted by Sarah Palin. The Democrats are hoping to cash in on the race pull exerted by Obama.
While many blacks are Democrats, there are numerous black Republicans. Naturally enough, some of them feel pulled towards Obama even though they disagree with his political values. This, of course, raises the question of what such Republicans should do.
One possibility is that they should vote for Obama because he is black. After all, many thinkers have argued that minorities (and women) need to support their own in order to fight back against past and present oppression. As such, black Republicans should vote for Obama because they and he are black.
One problem with this view is that it, obviously enough, seems to be racist. If white voters vote for McCain because of white solidarity, they would be considered racist. As such, for a black person to vote for Obama simply because he is black would be racist as well. Of course, it could be argued that there is a relevant difference between whites supporting a white and blacks supporting a black. Whites, one might say, are not an oppressed group and blacks are. Hence, the situations are different in a way that would make voting for Obama because he is black non-racist.
Another problem is that voting for someone (white or black) because of the color of his skin seems to go against Dr. King’s dream. To base one’s judgment on skin color would be, ironically enough, a step away from that dream. Naturally, it could be argued that having a black man in the White House would have such a positive effect that it would justify supporting him even on grounds that are racist.
Another possibility is that they should vote for him not because he is black, but because he would make a difference that they would support. In this case, they would not be supporting him simply because he is black, but because of what he would do. This might seem to be a subtle difference, but it is actually quite significant. Naturally enough, the desire to support him would have to stem from shared values: they value his Democratic agenda. However, this would be problematic for most Republicans-if they supported his Democratic agenda, then they would be Democrats and not Republicans.
Yet another possibility is that they should vote for McCain because they disagree with Obama’s views and agree with McCain. While they might be accused by some of turning their backs on their fellow blacks, they would be acting in a way consistent with Dr. King’s dream: they would be making a judgment based on their values and not on the color of a person’s skin. While it could be argued that as blacks they should vote for Obama, that could be seen as an attack on their values and their right to chose as individuals. To be guided solely by race would be, obviously enough racist. To be guided by one’s values (even if they might be regarded by some as mistaken) would be moving beyond race. After all, people should vote for the candidate who matches their values rather than the one who matches their skin color. This is why some white people should vote for Obama and some black people should vote for McCain.
Will you discuss how whites (both male and female) are “sometimes pulled one way by their political values and another by their race or gender concerns”?
An Open Letter to Senator John McCain and the Republican National Committee:
September 2, 2008
Dear Senator McCain and Mike Duncan, Chairman, Republican National Committee:
“Dear” is all you will get from me. By now you all should be in Minneapolis for your shindig that you call a “convention.”
I am an African-American, and I cannot hold back my anger any longer. It is a documented fact that the Republican Party before and during the Civil War supported and benefited from slavery. As a matter of fact, the Republican Party was started for the express purpose of defending slavery and holding down black people.
It is also a matter of record that the Ku Klux Klan was started by Republicans after the Civil War to terrorize and murder black and white Democrats in the South. Republicans hated the fact that many ex-slaves were serving in state and federal government. They also hated the fact that everyone of the ex-slaves were all members of the Democratic Party. All the white Democrats, before and after the Civil War, were sympathetic to the cause of abolition of slavery and of civil rights for blacks, therefore racist Republicans had no use for them.
The Republicans historically have been bitter opponents of the following Democratic initiatives:
• The 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in 1865
• The 1866 Civil Rights Act
• The First Reconstruction Act of 1867
• The 14th Amendment in 1868 that made all persons born in the U.S., including former slaves, U.S. citizens.
• The 15th Amendment in 1870 that give every citizen the right to vote
• The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 which was to stop Republican Klansmen to terrorized white and black Democrats
• The 1875 Civil Rights Act
• The 1957 Civil Rights Act
• The 1964 Civil Rights Act
• The 1965 Voters Rights Act
In every case, the white Republicans in the Senate, especially Senator Everett Dirksen, and in the House of Representatives fought passage of these laws in every turn as well as being compelled to give up their slaves after the Civil War. The Democratic leadership, especially Senator Robert Byrd who has always despised the Ku Klux Klan and who discouraged white Americans from joining that gang, fought very hard to have those laws passed. Democratic Senator Al Gore Sr., not only voted for the Civil Rights Act in 1964, but he, along side of Senator Byrd, fought a 74-day filibuster by Republicans to defeat the legislation. The Congressional Quarterly of June 26, 1964 recorded that, in the Senate, only 69% of Republicans (46 for, 21 against) voted for the Civil Rights Act as compared to 82% of Democrats (27 for, 6 against) the Civil Rights Act. In the House of Representatives, 61% of Republicans (152 for, 96 against) voted for the Civil Rights Act and. 80% of Democrats, (138 for, 34 against) voted for it.
The Republicans have also opposed every Democratic anti-lynching bill to their shame. The Democrats have always been opposed to lynchings for decades.
For these reason, we black people deserve an apology from the Republican Party for the following:
• support of slavery, on record in their platforms
• support of the Dred Scott decision
• support of segregation and Jim Crow prejudice
• opposition to anti-lynching laws
• attempts to destroy black schools and colleges, and the burning of black churches
• efforts to defeat the Reparation Bill of 1866
• efforts to defeat every piece of Civil Rights legislation from 1863 to 1964
• efforts to have the 1875 Civil Rights Act declared unconstitutional
• support of the Ku Klux Klan, composed of entirely Republicans, and its vile and violent racist agenda:
• Republican participation in the lynchings of thousands of blacks.
History will also show the following:
• Eugene “Bull” Conner (the poster boy of American racism) was a Republican.
• The poll tax was a Republican institution.
• Black codes and Jim Crow laws were instituted by Republicans.
Africans Americans are even due reparations from the Republican Party since it supported and benefited from slavery as well as supporting KKK terror, racism, etc. The Civil Rights movement started because of the majority white racist Republican power structure in the South.
The Democratic Party, of course, has had its problems racially here and there, unfortunately, but it does not have the consistent racist legacy for decades and decades, stretching back to the early 1800’s as the Republican Party has had. The Democratic Party, in general, has always been supportive of and open and honest with African Americans throughout its history.
You Republicans have been very slick in ignoring and even hiding your racist past from black people. It is time for the Republican Party to come clean, tell the truth, and settle the debt.
Sincerely,
Brother X
Brother X… ARE YOU DYSLEXIC or just down right EVIL? … I guess you figure if you put this stuff out not everyone will investigate and you’ll inculcate enough people… is that the plan?
Butler was a Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1867 to 1875 and again in 1877 to 1879. Despite his pre-war allegiance as a Democrat, in Congress he was conspicuous as a Radical Republican in Reconstruction legislation, and wrote the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. Along with Republican Senator Charles Sumner, he proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, a seminal and far-reaching law banning racial discrimination in public accommodations. The law was declared unconstitutional, and racial minorities in the United States would have to wait nearly a century before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would revive, and expand, the provisions of the law Butler backed.
The Ku Klux Klan Act was originally passed because some governors in the South during Reconstruction were unwilling or unable to act against violence by the Ku Klux Klan. In lynching cases, whites were almost never indicted by all-white coroner’s juries, and even when there was an indictment, all-white trial juries were extremely unlikely to vote for conviction. In many states, use of black militiamen would ignite a race war. When REPUBLICAN governor William Woods Holden of North Carolina called out the state militia against the Klan in 1870, the result was a backlash culminating with his impeachment in 1871. Many Southern states had already passed anti-Klan legislation, and, in February 1871, former Union general Benjamin Franklin Butler, a US House of Representatives member from Massachusetts, introduced federal legislation modeled on these acts. Some politicians at the national level professed doubt about Klan activities, but the tide was turned in favor of the bill by the governor of South Carolina’s appeal for federal troops, and by reports of a riot and massacre in a Meridian, Mississippi courthouse, during which a black state representative was forced to hide in the woods in order to escape a likely death.
In 1871, Republican President Ulysses S. Grant signed Butler’s legislation, the Ku Klux Klan Act.