Whenever I see Democrats revise history, I don’t know whether to laugh at how uninformed they are or be afraid at how much they lie. I tend to be more afraid because the desired end result is to discredit the Republican Party, keeping black folk loyal to the Democratic Party.
So when I read in Leonard Pitts’ Miami Herald column, “GOP blind to its race problem,” that “the modern GOP was created in 1965 with a stroke of Lyndon Johnson’s pen,” I couldn’t help but laugh. I would hope that Pitts would have done his homework to realize that he had stretched the truth so far as to be unrecognizable.
He wrote about an aide to Tennessee State Senator Diane Black (R), sending a distasteful email about Obama, accusing her and most of the party (as usual) of racism, calling them “weasels in elephants’ clothes.”
But instead of remaining silent, Frances Rice, president of the National Black Republican Association (NBRA) set Pitts straight. In her article, “Democrats’ Racial Hypocrisy,” she quotes Gerald Alexander, who refutes the argument that all the racist Democrats crossed over to the Republican Party in “The Myth of the Racist Republicans.”
She also quotes the Rev. Wayne Perryman, who in “Unfounded Loyalty” gives the Democrats’ history in slavery, segregation and socialism. Unfortunately, blacks blindly joined the Democratic Party because of their complete ignorance of its actual civil rights record. They only know the fabricated one.
Rice listed a litany of racist comments by Democrats, and challenged Pitts to condemn racism in the Democratic Party with the same vigor as he condemns racism in the Republican Party.
Pitts does what all black Democrats do: Ignore obvious racism by their own party. How about the blogger who showed RNC Chairman Michael Steele with a “blackened minstrel-style face, nappy hair and big, thick red lips?” Or all the nasty comments made about him since he became chairman?
Where was the outrage when Al Sharpton and Harry Belafonte called General Colin Powell and Dr. Condoleezza Rice “house n****rs”? Or when black Democratic film critic and entertainment journalist David Ehrenstein, wrote a column called “Obama the Magic Negro?”
But folk came out of the woodwork to condemn Rush Limbaugh for playing the song, “Barack the Magic Negro” and Republican Chip Saltzman for sending the CD out to fellow Republicans. See my December 2008 South Florida Times article, “Hypocrites All.”
So when Pitts and other silver-tongued black Democrats ask, “Why should black folk join the Republican Party,” my answer is “Why not?”
Since you don’t want to hear about the creation of the Republican Party in 1854 by anti-slavery white men or their passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments outlawing slavery, giving black folk citizenship and the right to vote, or their passage of civil rights legislation (including the 1954 Voting Rights Act Democratic President Lyndon Johnson gets credit for), then do you want to hear about affirmative action?
No, affirmative action was NOT a Democratic initiative. It was created by black Republican Arthur Fletcher, the “father of affirmative action,” who was the secretary of labor under President Richard Nixon, and advisor to four GOP presidents.
How about welfare reform, which trained thousands of black mothers and placed them in solid, paying jobs? Former President Bill Clinton gets credit, but the Republican Congress created the initiative (which Obama just rescinded by the way).
What about vouchers, which allow low-income black mothers to send their children to private schools that they could never afford (like the one Obama sends his kids to)?
By the way, he just struck down the hugely successful D.C. program. Now, the children have to go back to the crime-infested public schools where their mothers didn’t want them in the first place. But not a word of protest from black folk. Wonder why?
FYI, Michael Steele, Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams, Lt. Col. Allen West and hundreds of thousands of us don’t see the Democratic Party as the panacea for black folk, nor do we see the Republican Party as the party of racists.
You joined the party who created the KKK and, as Leonard Pitts admitted, “for a century …bombed schools, lynched innocents, perverted justice and terrorized millions in the name of intolerance.” Hello!!!
Can you imagine Jews flocking in droves to the very group that murdered millions in the Holocaust? How about the Iranians beaten in the streets today just happily going on to join the party of their beaters? What?
And you call us idiots?
Barbara Howard is president of Barbara Howard & Associates and the Florida state chair for C.O.R.E. (the Congress of Racial Equality).
BHoward@BHowardandAssoc.com
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