(ThyBlackMan.com) While on The O’Reilly Factor recently, Freshman Congressman Allen West (R-FL) proclaimed himself the modern day Harriet Tubman. According to West, “You have this 21st-century plantation that has been out there where the Democrat Party has forever taken the Black vote for granted… So I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman, to kind of lead people on the Underground Railroad away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility.”
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain recently stated “African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view…”
This empty rhetoric may be intended for the consumption of their Republican benefactors and play to the Fox News audience, but it has no traction with the African American community that West proclaims to want to “save.” All too often, writers, journalists, analysts, and others demonstrate their ignorance of African American people and the African American experience by trying to assign simplistic answers to very complex problems, events, and circumstances. This usually results in African Americans and their politics being viewed as devoid of substance and emotion; when in fact, Black politics is policy focused and born out of a people’s historical experience, an experience that includes slavery, oppression, exploitation and the life-long quest for human and civil rights.
Reps. West, Herman Cain, Michael Steele, Alan Keyes, and other Black conservatives continue to proclaim that African American allegiance to the Democratic Party is a baseless, thoughtless response by a gullible people, but they fail to offer any substantive policy that will address the issues impacting the community. I challenge West or Cain to identify any substantive policy initiatives from Republicans that was designed to attract the African American community. They keep inviting African Americans to the restaurant but can’t tell anyone what’s on the menu or how much the meal will cost.
Finish story over at; UrbanCusp – Herman Cain, Allen West, etc…
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