(ThyBlackMan.com) When you think about it, even a broke clock is correct twice a day.
Those are comforting thoughts in the wake of realizing that I agree with Senator Tim Scott’s comments during a Fox News interview. According to the Republican Senator from South Carolina,
I am just amazed that the last decade Democrats have had an entitlement mentality that they are entitled to the black vote.
In fact, I would extend Senator Scott’s observation. My addition would read that for far too long large swaths of Black America have behaved as if it was their sworn duty to cast a ballot for the Democratic Party. Now let us not ignore the fact that Black America’s migration from “the Party of Lincoln” is grounded in the historical realities of the Great Depression Era.
The harsh reality is that for the entirety of America’s existence, neither political party has offered Blacks a significant opening to exercise the theoretical equality promoted in a series of Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. One of the most obvious examples of White resistance is found in the words of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (D) during his commencement address at Howard University.
In an in-direct manner, Johnson informed Blacks that White America had given all that they were willing to offer with the Civil Rights (64) and Voting Rights (65) Acts. According to Johnson, it was time that Black America did for itself.
Equal opportunity is essential, but not enough. … Ability is stretched or stunted by the family you live with, and the neighborhoods you live in, by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the infant, the child, and the man. . . .
Overt job discrimination is only one of the important hurdles which must be overcome before color can disappear as a determining factor in the lives and fortunes of men . . . The extent to which an individual is able to develop his aptitudes will largely depend upon the circumstances present in the family within which he grows up and the opportunities which he encounters at school and in the larger community.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took issue with American politicians’ failure to aid Blacks. According to King,
For the vast majority of white Americans, the past decade — the first phase — had been a struggle to treat the Negro with a degree of decency, not of equality… The outraged white citizen had been sincere when he snatched the whips from the Southern sheriffs and forbade them more cruelties. But when this was to a degree accomplished, the emotions that had momentarily inflamed him melted away.
When negroes looked for the second phase, the realization of equality, they found that many of their white allies had quietly disappeared. Negroes felt cheated, especially in the North, while many whites felt that the negroes had gained so much it was virtually impudent and greedy to ask for more so soon…
Negroes of America had taken the President, the press and the pulpit at their word when they spoke in broad terms of freedom and justice . . . The word was broken, and the free-running expectations of the Negro crashed into the stone walls of white resistance.
It appears that American political leaders of every stripe have dedicated their public lives to ensuring Black suffering continues unabated.
Despite what Democratic Party officials would like to believe, their attractiveness to Black America has been facilitated by the phrase-mongering that serves as standard verse within a Republican Party filled with racial bigots; a hatred that was frequently expressed via the maintenance of Black poverty, public lynching’s, and the rape of Black women.
To the chagrin of Republican Party leaders, the Democratic Party is more attractive to Blacks by default. This no-brainer choice is directly connected to the Republican Party’s willingness to serve as a safe-haven for racial bigots. This willingness to harbor an eclectic collective of racial bigots has done nothing to aid their recruitment of Blacks.
Donald Trump’s futile pandering to Black America for political support via the statement of “what do you have to lose” is revealing. Embed within this statement is the insinuation that the Democratic Party has done little for Black America and maybe it is time that ‘you beautiful people tried a beautiful option to reach a beautiful end, it would be beautiful; really beautiful.’
Unfortunately for the Republican Party, pervasive disenchantment with their current politico-economic marginality has failed to lead Blacks to associate with avowed bigots. From our perspective, the Republican Party overflows with White bigots who have no problem expressing their belief that America is a White man’s nation and all others should be grateful that they are allowed to live here. Until the Republican Party expels its impressive collection of virulent avowed bigots, Blacks cannot consider them a reasonable alternative to the Democratic Party.
I am certain that Tim Scott understands the above matters better than most. Let us not forget that he is forced to associate with such types on a continual basis. Scott will most-likely never commit political suicide by publicly admitting to these truths about the Republican Party, it would be far too harsh for party leaders to digest and not feel the compulsion to expel him from their midst. If injected with a truth serum, the Senator from South Carolina would state that it is in fact the presence of uncouth racial bigots who have no problem expressing their multiple hatreds in public arenas that has produced the sense of entitlement that he alluded to during the Fox New interview mentioned above.
If provided the opportunity, I would ask Senator Scott, “What other choice do forward-minded Blacks have other than to abstain from the political process?”
I hope that Tim Scott and his Republican Party cronies one day arrive at the understanding that Black America is not running to the Democratic Party, they are running from a Republican Party overflowing with racial bigots who have historically been harbingers of death for Blacks.
To uncover from whence this problem begins, Senator Tim Scott needs to look no further than the top of his political party and realize that the hatred hurled from the Oval Office trickles down to the Republican Party’s underlings in a manner that reminds one of Reagan’s trickle-down economics schemes.
Entitlement? No!!!!!
Selection of the most attractive political option by default? Certainly!!!!!
Staff Writer; Dr. James Thomas Jones III
Official website; http://www.ManhoodRaceCulture.com
One may also connect with this brother via Twitter; DrJamestJones.