(ThyBlackMan.com) After the 1990 U.S. Census, radical liberal Blacks from the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the Congressional Black Caucus, et.al were approached by Lee Atwater, then Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) about working together on congressional redistricting.
They were about to be screwed with no Vaseline and did not know it. They were warned but did not listen.
How do I know? I was the one who warned them. I was still in my twenties and as I look back at this situation, I cannot help but to think that all these “old-timers” did not take me seriously because I was so young. After all, most of these guys were twenty, thirty, forty, years my senior!
Unfortunately, this would not be the last time I was disregarded because of my youth.
Atwater was a good friend of mine and a confidant of President George H.W. Bush. Atwater was a political savant. He was our James Carville without the histrionics.
Atwater and the rest of the Republican leadership negotiated a deal with Benjamin Hooks, head of the NAACP, John Jacobs, head of the National Urban Leage, and Kweisi Mfume, Maryland congressman and head of the Congressional Black Caucus.
All the other radical liberal old-time civil rights groups supported the deal.
I can now laugh at how ridiculous I must have sounded when I told these guys in no uncertain terms, “If you agree to this deal, you and Blacks folks are going to get screwed. I do not know how, but you will get screwed.”
What deal did they agree to?
These radical Black liberals wanted to increase the number of Blacks elected to congress and wanted Republicans to work with them to establish more majority-minority districts.
The plan worked marvelously. The CBC started with thirteen members in 1971. Prior to the 1992 congressional elections, the first since the newly drawn maps after the 1990 census, they had twenty-seven members. They added seventeen new members post 1992 elections for a new total of thirty-nine members. They were up to forty members by 1995.
Now it is time to eat our vegetables.
While these short term minded radical Democrats sold their souls in the 1980s and 1990s to pad the membership of the CBC, in exchange they unwittingly increased the number of elected white Republicans, especially in the South.
This led to a watershed moment that Democrats have yet to recover from, nor will they ever.
In January of 1995, the Republicans became a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years!!! It was labeled the Gingrich Revolution.
Former congressman from Georgia, Newt Gingrich became the first Republican House Speaker in over 40 years. This was a direct result of the majority-minority districts concession to Blacks.
By tightly packing Black Democrats into narrow districts, the remaining white voters would become reliable voters for Republicans for decades to come.
Republicans were more than happy to give these Black Democrats what they wanted. Republicans were thinking long ball and the Democrats were thinking with emotion and symbolism.
These radical Black liberals concluded that it was better to have more Blacks in the CBC and be in the minority versus having fewer Blacks and be in the majority.
This sophomoric thinking is why the Black community is in such bad shape today. These media appointed radical Black leaders continue to lead with their emotions and not with their intellect.
Despite liberal protestations to the contrary, the Court did not repeal or even dilute the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) in the Louisiana v. Callais case.
The Court simply stated that you can no longer use race as the primary rationale for congressional maps. The decision is a net positive for the country and the Black community because politicians of all stripes will now be forced to build coalitions to win reelections; not just rely on all Black or all white voters.
After the 2020 census, Louisiana had one Black district; but radical Black liberal voters got greedy and claimed they should have two because a third of the state’s population was Black. Obviously, this greed backfired big time.
I find it ironic that you never hear radical liberals quote Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (52 U.S.C. §10301): “nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.” Game, set and match!!!
The Supreme Court concluded that race can be a factor in drawing congressional boundaries, but not the overriding factor. States must view the lines in totality based on the circumstances present in that particular state. A state cannot just draw lines to simply create a new Black district.
Blacks must come to terms with the fact that the VRA was always supposed to be temporary, not open-ended. This applies to affirmative action and other preference programs.
Most people agree that these programs were appropriate in the 1960 as a means to rid the country of Jim Crown and its vestiges; but as with most government programs, liberals continued to expand, and expand these programs until they became unrecognizable and had drifted so far away from their original purpose.
They were meant only for Blacks because of our unique history in this country. These programs were never meant to include Hispanics, Asians, homosexuals, or to address those who did not speak English.
In the military we call this mission creep. You go to war with Iraq for the express purpose of removing them from Kuwait, but once there you decide to remove Sadam Hussain from office. This is the definition of mission creep.
These media appointed radical Black leaders continue to make other group’s priorities our priorities when they have absolutely nothing in common with our unique history in America.
Sixty-four percent of Americans voted in the 2024 presidential election. Blacks comprised fourteen percent of eligible voters in 2024 with seventy-three percent of all Blacks being eligible to vote; but Black turnout was only sixty percent.
Blacks have an enthusiasm issue, not a voter suppression issue. Forty percent of Blacks see no value in casting a vote during elections; therein lies the problem, not racism or Donald Trump or Republicans!
Both parties have a great opportunity to more effectively engage with the Black voter, but they both must come with a different approach than they have used in the past.
The Democrat’s approach to the Black community has become as the sounding brass or the tingling cymbal, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
The Republican’s rhetoric is so insensitive and tone deaf that it is off-putting. Their rhetoric is so loud that Blacks cannot hear a damn thing they are saying.
This could be a wakeup call to both parties, but are they listening?
Staff Writer; Raynard Jackson
This talented brother is a Pulitzer Award nominated columnist and founder and chairman of Black Americans for a Better Future (BAFBF), a federally registered 527 Super PAC established to get more Blacks involved in the Republican Party. BAFBF focuses on the Black entrepreneur. For more information about BAFBF, visit www.bafbf.org. You can follow Raynard on Twitter; RealRaynardJ; on Gettr: RaynardJackson.
Can also drop him an email at; RaynardJ@ThyBlackMan.com.
