If you are both an American of African descent and a member of the Democratic Party, one question looms more magnified with each passing day: Are you at least vexed, if not disappointed and angry, at Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign?
It is well documented that Barack Obama supporters and many high placed Democratic Party officials worry that Bill and Hillary Clinton’s scorched earth campaign against Obama will burn the possibility of a Democratic presidency down to the ground.
What is not being openly talked about is the possibility that Hillary’s campaign could also seriously diminish the Democratic Party’s core, which for too long has been taken for granted. Since the South Carolina primary, African-American voters have abandoned the Clintons with 80 to 90 percent voting for Obama.
Americans of African descent appear to be galvanizing with an understanding that more than 90 percent of their voters are Democrats. If a sizable chunk of these voters organize across the country in a loudly publicized fashion to attract even more numbers, and quit the Democratic Party and become Independents, they could reshape the American political and economic landscape.
Clintonism is providing the impetus for such abandonment and a consequent paradigm shift. Many black elected officials, preachers and Democratic Party operatives who have sided with Hillary’s campaign are not only caught in the mire, but must also face a wounded constituency to which they proved to be unaccountable.
American blacks who have touted a Pan-African or black nationalist eco-political and cultural bent, but have been virtually silenced by white America and marginalized by Negro leadership – including political, religious and civil rights organizations – may now surface with an “I told you so” message about white nationalism as displayed by the Clintons and company.
The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., Barack Obama’s retired pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, who came under fire last week for what the white press called “incendiary” and “un-American” remarks during some sermons, is a case in point.
Now, here is an African-American former U. S. Marine with a Ph.D in the history of religion from the University of Chicago, who is a kindred spirit of the black liberation theologians. When this man dons his robe with three stripes on each sleeve, it is because he is a true scholar who mastered the Greek and Hebrew, and expounds on the literature of Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr – among the most influential Protestant theologians of the twentieth century.
Thanks to TV news propagandists who edited together select snippets of three Rev. Wright sermons, everything that black America saw and heard was a black preacher at his best: teaching Christianity and telling the truth! Rev. Wright said not one thing that was even remotely apart from the truth. Let the church say, “Amen!’’
It is, indeed, time for black people to jump ship and bolster the Independent Movement in U. S. politics.
Leveling the field will cause Republicans and Democrats to come running for the black vote, offering much for blacks to evaluate.
Those states, like Florida, that deny Independents the right to vote in primary elections, will not be able to stand the torrent of righteousness rained upon them. Amend-ment XIV of The Constitution of The United States of America says that “. . . No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; . . . .” Amendment XV goes further: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. . . .”
Al Calloway • Al_Calloway@Verizon.net
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