(ThyBlackMan.com) One of the most troubling aspects of Candace Owens’ Blexitmovement and the recent campaign to convince an ascending group of novice political thinkers is that it displays how easy it is to pull the wool over the eyes of a black populace enveloped by a comforting blanket of historical illiteracy.
Unfortunately for black political solidarity, the Blexit movement threatens to cause significant division in a political arena where we can least afford it. Making matters worse is the reality that the foundation the alluded to black neo-conservatives have laid is akin to a slight of hand trick. An amateurish trick that impresses those who have no understanding of either the Republican or Democratic Party.
The current argument being advanced to naïve, yet aspiring, black political activists goes as follows.
- It has historically been the Republican Party that showed interests in helping Black America.
- Abraham Lincoln, “the great emancipator”, was a Republican.
- It was the “Radical Republicans” led by figures such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner who led the charge to protect black voting rights by impeaching President Andrew Johnson for his failure to protect blacks during American Reconstruction.
- The Democratic Party was the party of slave-holders.
- Democratic Party officials were racial bigots who never had much concern for blacks except for when it came to economic exploitation.
This clunky argument culminates with a simpleton assertion that it is for these reasons that blacks should “leave the Democratic Party plantation” and embrace the Republican Party.
The problem with this logic is that it includes a slight of hand trick that makes what you think that you know about this matter a blatant historical untruth. Let me explain to you why today’s Republican Party is actually yesterday’s Democratic Party.
When the system of American chattel slavery ended in 1865 with the ending of the U.S. Civil War, there was no doubt that the party of the South was the Democratic Party. It was the Democratic Party that fought with all of their might to extend their “cash cow system of slavery” and protect their southern values and way of life. I am not here to refute these historical facts.
As I am confident that you understand, many things change over thecourse of time; the history of the Democratic and Republican Party are not immune to such alterations. Scholars will tell you that a significant identity crisis occurred among southern-based members of the Democratic Party when Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), a New Yorker who did not agree with the racial bigotry of the southern wing of the Democratic Party, won the Presidency in the midst of a worsening 1930’s Great Depression. The worst fears of southern-based racial bigots in the Democratic Party were realized when FDR rejected the harshest portions of “southern culture” and provided limited concessions to blacks. It is FDR’s overtures to Black America, such as the creation of the Black Cabinet to address problems among blacks, that drove a significant wedge between southern-based Democrats and more racially progressive portions of the party.
The above division within the Democratic Party became untenable when FDR’s administration refused to back off of its relatively limited offerings to Black America. In 1948, the southern portion of the Democratic Party broke away from the National Party and began referring to themselves as Dixiecrats; a name that efficiently conveys their decision to honor racial bigotry over even party affiliation.
By the 1970s, southern Democrats made the expected political leap to no longer be affiliated with the Democratic Party and migrated into the Republican camp. The most notable Dixiecrats that made the shift during this refashioning of themselves as Republicans were well known racial bigots Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.
When one considers these historical facts, it is obvious that a figuresuch as Candace Owens is either historically illiterate (entirely plausible) or advancing half-truths to bolster her argument that blacks need to realize that they should support the Republican Party because it is the only political entity that has ever attempted to uplift Black America. I am confident that the graves of Republican leaders of yesteryear such as Abe Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Hiram Revels, and Blanche K. Bruce are disturbed at the present moment because this new wave of black neo-conservatives have seized their legacy of limited racial progressivism, a legacy that the ancestors of those who currently fashion themselves as Republicans resisted with every fiber of their being, and claimed it as their own. That is a historic, historical untruth. Most troubling to me is the reality that no one has called black neo-conservatives on their ideological chicanery. Such a failure is a grievous miscalculation and error that holds extended consequences for the future of black progressivism.
Staff Writer; Dr. James Thomas Jones III
Official website; http://www.ManhoodRaceCulture.com
One may also connect with this brother via Twitter; DrJamestJones.