Why doesn’t black loyalty deserve reward?
That question is one that deserves deep and lengthy consideration. Especially if you are black. In any just world loyalty should be rewarded. So why haven’t black Americans been rewarded by the Democratic Party they have been so staunchly loyal for so many decades?
I’m not black, and won’t try to suggest I understand what it means to be black in America. But I am smart to know a bad deal when I see one. I know that when you vote for a specific party over and over for decades, as black Americans have done, because of promises they made to improve your lot in life and that never seems to happen, something is wrong with that deal.
From Lincoln and up to the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt, black Americans aligned themselves with the Republican party that had brought them out of slavery. However, ever since FDR in the early 1930’s and up to today, Black Americans have been the most consistent supporters of the Democratic party. Since 1964 at least 82% of black Americans have voted for a Democrat for President. In 2008 and 2012, for Barrack Obama the numbers were 95% and 93% respectively. That is powerful loyalty to one party, and you would think it would justify some rewards.
So how has that worked out for black Americans. What rewards have they received for your incredible, and enviable, loyalty to the Democrat party? From my perspective I can’t see very much. Perhaps I’m missing some perspective, but I don’t see much. Not that there hasn’t been some “progress”, but I would have expected more, especially with Americas first black President holding power in both the House and the Senate all at once. Yet I don’t see much of significance; especially considering we’re talking about a span of more than 80 years.
This loyalty is especially confusing when you think of who they give that loyalty to. It is well known that the black vote in the south resurrected Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and aspirations. This is the same Joe Biden that has at times spoken of the black community with apparent disdain. The same Joe Biden that embraced the support of two segregationist Southern democrats in the 1970. The same Joe Biden who pushed forward and ultimately passed a 1994 crime bill, resulting in horrible impact on the black community and brought about mass incarcerations.
It is easy to get off track and add in a bunch of well documented evidence of Democrat actions and their impacts on our black communities, but I will try to avoid that. That is not my purpose. I seek only to ask the question; shouldn’t our black communities have received more for their loyalty to the Democratic Party than they got? Much more? I think yes, they should have. Looking back over the political landscape of those 80+ years it seems like very election cycle the Democrats fill up the promise bag only to toss it away afterward. The pandering to black voters is incredible for it’s transparency. Consider that now Nancy Pelosi and her cohorts have decided they want to remove statues of 11 Confederate Generals from the Capitol. OK. But what a piece of political BS. Nancy has been going to Washington as a member of the House of Representatives for 33 years. Twice during that time she has been Speaker of the House, once under Barrack Obama when the Dems had the Senate too. So why now all of a sudden? Why is removing those statues such a critical thing to do now. It isn’t going to do anything of real significance in the fight against racism. It is just a grand gesture…a grandstanding political gesture… for the purpose of making black Americans think she is doing something for them when in fact she is only doing something for herself and her party as they head toward the November elections. It’s all just optics, and optics mean nothing when all is said and done.
I was a Democrat once upon a time. My whole family was. We were close to unions and the promises they made to Democrat families. But over the years, as I moved from the immaturity of adolescence and a college education and into the real world I began to question why of all the promises the Democrats were making each election so few of them came to pass. Where were the rewards for the loyalty I and my family had given them? All we got was an increasingly glutinous socialist bureaucracy that was fat on top and never had enough revenue to feed their greed.
As black Americans head to the polls this year it would seem a perfect time to look back at the history of the last 80 years of unrewarded loyalty and consider casting your vote not for more promises that almost never come to pass, but for the opportunity to participate in the American dream more completely and through that take greater control over your destiny.
