It has served them well.

"For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South.” ~ Michael Steele~

I am not an educator, and I do not have a degree in history. But every now and then when I post I feel that I have to give my friends in A-merry-ca a history lesson. Why? Because some folks just never seem to learn. Or, it's just really convenient for them to forget. I was inspired to give tonight's lecture because of the following tidbit from an oped by a wingnut named Billy Hallowell writing for some website called The Blaze.

"..Then, last night, Chris Matthews made a startling association — that Rick Perry is like “Bull Connor with a smile.”

For those who don’t know, Connor was a Democrat and the Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights era. He infamously directed the use of fire hoses and attack dogs against peaceful, African American protestors — extreme brutality that was rooted in sheer racism.
This bizarre statement came after Matthews’ guest, Wayne Slater of The Dallas Morning News, reacted to Perry’s criticisms of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Slater explained that entitlements are only the beginning in the push for “states rights.” According to The Daily Caller, he said:

“The question is the attack on Perry is ‘Social Security is a Ponzi scheme,’ ‘Medicare needs to be changed or potentially abolished,’ which is not precisely what he said. Raising questions about the Voting Rights Act saying it is just a tool for gerrymandering in the South and the Civil Rights Act — the terms under which we’ve established — this has the look of someone who when he talks about states’ rights, states’ rights, states’ rights could make some voters, again — very nervous.” [Source] 

OK, let's try this again for the...oh, I don't know...millionth time.

Yes, Bull Conner and others like him were dumbocrats. In fact, most of your white southern racist during the Jim Crow era were dumbocrats. That fact is undisputed. What is also undisputed is that most (if not all)of those racist southern whites, fled the dumbocratic party in droves and became....wait for it wait for it..... REPUBLICANS! And this was done, thanks in part, to a wonderfully crafted political ploy called "The Southern Strategy." It was where white politicians exploited the racism felt towards blacks by fellow whites to vote against the political party which had now become the party of African Americans.

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."^]


That was Richard Nixon's version of David Axelrod giving us a little insight into the strategy that now works so well for the "party of Lincoln."

Of course it all started before that, when Southern dumbocrats like Richard Russell and Herman Talmadge boycotted the 1964 party convention in Atlantic City. All because Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. Many of the southern delegates at that time refused to support the national ticket because of Johnson's actions. Throw in our boy, Barry Goldwater, --who joined the southern dumbocrats to filibuster the Act-- and the rest, as they say, is history.

That is your republican party today, the one that ran away from all things civil rights and never looked back. So no matter how much you hear wingnuts try to revise and revisit history, just remember who they were back then and why they switched. It's why every time ninety percent of the time you see something like this, and like this, taking place on the national landscape; it involves a republican.

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.” ~ reublican strategist, Lee Atwater~

Some things never change.

 

Would blacks vote for Obama if he were white?

*

Harold Jackson is an opinion columnist for my hometown paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. Mr Jackson, in case you were wondering, is black. ( like he could be anything but with a name like Harold Jackson). Anyway, he wrote the following article about black folks voting for the O man because he is black:

"There's no way that I'd vote for Barack Obama just because he and I are both black men.
I grew up in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1950s and '60s. A third-grade classmate went to jail for marching. Another little girl at our school was killed when the Ku Klux Klan bombed Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

I've known people who were beaten by Bull Connor's cops in Birmingham and whipped by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. And I don't think any of them shed blood for my right to vote just to see me cast my ballots based on skin color.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was the result of a convincing argument that black people were just as capable of making an intelligent decision about political candidates as any white person.

More recently, though, a lie has found favor in America. It's the falsehood that African Americans vote as a monolith, without regard to the issues or positions of the candidates. It's a lie promoted by those who don't want to admit that their preferred candidate was wrong on the issues that matter most to most African American voters.

Black voters' interests are so common because their circumstances are so similar. Even those with better educations, higher incomes, and more expensive homes are not too far removed from family or friends living modestly. Poverty is itself a recent memory for many middle-income African Americans. Some feel they are only a paycheck or two from returning to that status.

Blacks don't get credit for carefully weighing candidates' positions on the issues, even though they have shown that they will vote for a white candidate over a black one whose views are not to their liking. "

More here.

I agree with him. This notion that all those dumb blacks who are incapable of thinking through the issues, just mindlessly vote for the O man because he is black, is bull shit. Has it ever occurred to anyone that black folks just might vote for him because he is the best candidate?

Here is my theory about black folks: we are committed to a party, not skin color. We will vote for the white democrat over the black republican every time. Just ask Kenneth Blackwell, Michael Steele, or Lynn Swann. The last time I checked, I didn't see a whole lot of brothers and sisters here in Philly switching party registration to vote for Lynn Swann when he ran for Governor because he is black. He got his ass kicked among black voters by a white Jewish guy, because we happened to like his policies more. Mr. Swann ran as a republican, and that pretty much guaranteed that black folks weren't going to vote for his black ass. And that would have been true whether he was yellow, red, brown, or purple. If Alan Keyes crazy ass ran against any white democrat in A-merry-ca, please believe that he would not get my vote, period. The shit is that deep.

But I will say this: If all things are equal (all things, including party affiliation) black folks, and any other race for that matter, will vote for the person who looks like them over the other guy. Don't believe me? Do you think if this was Bobby Chin running for president he wouldn't get 99% of the Asian vote? Do you think if it was Bobby Sanchez he wouldn't get at least 90% of the Latino vote? Come on now, let's keep it real with each other. The only reason white folks can afford to make choices is because they pretty much dominate this shit. So having a white guy run for office is no big deal to the average white person. He or she can vote for Bobby Sanchez, Bobby Chin, or Bobby Johnson, and still feel like he will have a seat at the table, because everyone around the minority guy at the table will look like them. We don't have that option. Most of the time we pretty much have to just vote for the person who will hurt us the least.

So please, no more talk about this black people voting for Obama because he is black bullshit. Black people will vote for Obama because he is a democrat, and he happens to be better than the other guy. A guy, by the way, who is crazier than the craziest uncle we ever hid in the attic.

*Pic courtesy of feakingnews.com