“I want you to think with me this morning from the subject: rediscovering lost values. Rediscovering lost values. There is something wrong with our world, something fundamentally and basically wrong. I don’t think we have to look too far to see that. I’m sure that most of you would agree with me in making that assertion.” -- Martin Luther King Jr.
The approach of King’s holiday has new meaning to me this year. In 2013, I came out of the closet -- as a Black Republican.
Coming out was more than just saying I am a Republican; it required putting my words into action. When I started coming out in 2013 many of my Democratic associates were very surprised. Aware of the stereotype that Republicans are white and racist, I questioned them about why they were surprised I was a Republican.
It all boiled down to their opinion that Republicans don’t care about poor people - especially black people. My work in the community demonstrated that I did care and therefore I must be a Democrat. My counter-argument was that as a Republican it is my civic responsibility to work in my community; example: Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglas, Martin Luther King, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Michael Steele, Condoleezza Rice… sorry I got carried away. Is it possible all of us have forgotten our history?
Speaking of history, let’s set the story straight about who persecuted whom. It was a group of Democrats who created the KKK to lynch and intimidate white and black Republicans. In the modern period, Republicans have rarely had the U.S. Congressional heft to set straight a false national narrative. Selma, Bloody Sunday – Republicans were not in power. Little Rock Nine – not in power, but a Republican President sent in troops to escort them safely. Passing of the Civil Rights Act –the bill was passed because Republicans, then in the minority, voted in favor of the bill by a higher percentage than the Democrats. In the nine states listed in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans were not in power. In fact, those states had 100 years of Democratic rule. The law was installed to protect the residents from the prevailing Democrat power structure.
And by the way, guess who forgot to adjust the numbers in Section 4 of the VRA that would have averted the Supreme Court’s ruling? Who was President in 2009? Shouldn't the President have insisted that Congress update the numbers? And why didn’t the Democrat administration jump on that issue? I’m just saying.
Now my dear Republicans, don’t you start cheering “cuz I got sumtin fah ya too” (Yes, I sometimes use a little Ebonics). How dare you remain quiet for so long! How dare you let them call you racist and not say something about it! How could you forget that you were the party of abolition whose president freed the slaves? History seems to keep repeating itself; we’re always letting a faction of the party influence the whole group. I get it. As Republicans, we support the freedom to choose, favor dissent, state’s rights and personal responsibility. And since we can’t point to a time in history when we as a party have dominated the nation for decades, you may have been getting a little itchy for a win in 1964 and chose to sidestep defining issues.
That year, the Republicans chose Barry Goldwater as their Presidential nominee. I wasn’t there, but history shows that black Republicans repeatedly asked the party to not offend and insult the black community, who had been supporters for so long. Even baseball legend Jackie Robinson, an outspoken Republican, pleaded with the party to nominate a different candidate because of the message it was sending. The Black community wanted Republicans to vigorously embrace and even celebrate their past history. The party didn’t listen.
It’s now 50 years later from that 1964 election and I’m asking my party “How’s that working out for you?” Not to worry. There has been a rumbling with in the black community and History/Fate/Karma has brought you to the edge of your wilderness wanderings. This is the point where you can choose to embrace your original history (freed slaves and abolitionist) or you can wither away. This is more than just an episode on the Price is Right with the audience yelling for you to pick door #2. This is important. No matter what you do, we will press forward—the phoenix rises, even from its own ashes.
Regina Roundtree is the Chairperson/President of CT Black Republicans and Conservatives and the CEO of Cogent Consulting. Her career has been spent helping people connect and communicate in a way that is authentic, informative and beneficial for all involved. She is also the new Chairperson for CTGOP’s Urban Affairs Coalition.
Regina V. Roundtree
CT Black Republicans & Conservatives
@HtfRepRising (Twitter)
Comments
It is entirely understandable that blacks would accept the Lincolnian view of the Founding. It is echoed in the famous speech Martin Luther King given in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial; "This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'" Of course, the black en mass exit from the Republican Party occurred back in 1932 when the other party promised a federal government brandishing programs and spending money to fix social problems, not mere natural rights.
Barry Goldwater is held in high regard because he saw the danger of a metastasizing federal government. (Note: in my fifth grade mock election I was an LBJ man.)And, now fifty years after his quixotic run for President, the fundamental disagreement we have as a people persists; are there any legal limits to federal concern and action? One would have a hard time concluding that Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, G. H. W. Bush, Dole, G. W. Bush, McCain, or Romney believe there are. Our current little presidente is certain there are no limits even to executive power.
Goldwater's opponent, loathsome Lyndon Johnson, gave us not only the Civil Rights laws, imposing federale social engineering on a recalcitrant Confederacy and its sympathizing bitter clingers, but also the heroically destructive war on poverty, and the fiscally insane Medicare program. Judging by the share of their vote they give to the Dems it would appear that blacks couldn't be happier. Personally, while opposed to the entire Civil Rights clap-trap, particularly as a federal govt. operation, I'd settle for an end to affirmative discrimination.
We need to be a unified People. We can't last much longer with a growing population believing that it is not of the People; that every minority group imaginable has a rubber check to cash. We need a People unified behind the Constitution, even if it has zero to do with natural rights or an associated abstract egalitarian principle. We need to unify behind the principle of a federal government with few and enumerated powers.
Blacks should consider the paleo-conservative position. For example, look at what the pols of both parties are doing to We the People with their immigration fanaticism. Stipulate that blacks and whites have a troubled history here in America; still, we do share a common heritage. It's 2014;we are all Americans. The only people who think that a failure to enforce immigration limits makes any sense are those who believe that in diversity is our strength. But, it is not beneficial to the social fabric, such as it is, nor of economic benefit to American individuals of any colour to have an unending flood of poor illiterate aliens waived in as they violate our sovereignty. But, with ideological fierceness of Lincolnian dimensions our pols impose enforce the equality principle across the universe. No discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, or nationality allowed even at the national border.
I too vote to be ME!
Orlando
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Well, I am one, but at this point the reason is not so much what the Republican Party believes. It doesn't know what it believes, and that goes double for the Nutmeg branch.
But it stands in (some)opposition to what the Dems believe; Social Justice without regard for the Constitution or rule of law; a recipe for social decay. Cruise the North End of Hartford for a look-see at the achievements of LBJ's War on Poverty. But, the Constitution is all we have to hold us together, even as socially we aren't as together as the social engineers might like. Throw the Constitution overboard, and we have chaos. Those of us whose ancestry goes back before the Civil War, and that obviously includes most blacks, have no back-up country to flee to after the Baraq Obama Party gets done trashing our home. Neither Ireland nor Israel, Italy nor Mexico, will take us in. And, now come the Progressive Fascists telling us we aren't even welcome here if we don't like gays enough or if we find late term abortions a moral abomination.
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Governor Cuomo stated last Friday that "extreme conservatives who are right-to life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay....have no place in the state of New York, because that's not who New Yorkers are."
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2014/01/20/cnn-ignores-andrew-cuomo-telling-extreme-conservatives-they-can-leave-st#ixzz2r2cSi6xu