Opinion

Runaway slaves, Frederick Douglass Republicans and the rise of the black conservative

Yates Walker Conservative Activist
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It’s been a week since MSNBC cleansed its broadcast of the Republican National Convention. If you happened to watch the RNC on Chris Matthews’ network last Tuesday, you missed the speeches of Senate candidate Ted Cruz, former Congressman Artur Davis, Puerto Rico first lady Luce Vela Fortuño, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval and congressional candidate Mia Love. Why were these intelligent, accomplished Republican leaders scrubbed from the broadcast?

Because they aren’t white.

It would have been scandalous if MSNBC had any credibility to lose.

It’s almost funny. You see, liberalism is a religion. As with fundamentalists of every stripe, reality must occasionally be bent, twisted and skewed to conform to the tenets of faith. As the far left’s high priests, the white liberals who helm MSNBC’s programming sometimes have to edit reality for the white liberals who watch MSNBC. The faithful must have faith. Ergo, on-screen minorities must be oppressed and in need, preferably huddled in small clusters. They are not self-reliant and individualistic. They are never conservative.

Whatever MSNBC’s explanation, what the network effectively confessed with its whitewashing is a faltering faith. It’s a good sign, really. However noble they believe the liberal vision to be, MSNBC’s liberals recognize that something’s gone awry in its execution. Not to worry. A new Messiah is always right around the corner. In the meantime, white liberals will need to block out a little reality in order to remind themselves of their open-mindedness.

Liberals often joke about how white the Republican Party is. They sometimes seem cocky about having the African-American vote in their back pocket. It’s strange. Look at what has happened to black America since 1964, when over 85% of African-Americans started voting Democrat.

Forget that the black unemployment rate is over 14% today. Forget about poverty. Forget that 72% of black children are born out of wedlock. Forget about the illiteracy epidemic, high school dropout rates, gun violence, drug use, teen pregnancy and disproportionate prison populations. Focus on one fact alone. Abortion is the number one killer of African-Americans. Over 1,000 black babies — which liberal hero and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger liked to call “human weeds” — are aborted each day.

Democrats shouldn’t be proud. If your most loyal supporters are systematically killing themselves, there’s something wrong with your plan for them.

The truth is that Democrats need blacks and Hispanics to remain in the oppression hive mind. Minorities need to be impoverished, uneducated and — hopefully — on food stamps. They must be dependent. If blacks and Hispanics follow the path of the Italians and Irish, the Democrats will lose more than a third of their constituency. Heaven forbid they climb their way out of the ghetto, start businesses and question their allegiance to the Democratic Party.

Fortunately, more are. And Barack Obama got 96% of the black vote in 2008. There’s nowhere to go but down.

The charge of blanket racism against the Republican Party always seemed ridiculous to me. How could the party of Lincoln be considered racist? Still, the whiteness of my party used to bug me a little, as did the fact that the vast majority of black Americans vote Democrat. I’m glad to be able to say that change is in the air. For the past two years, black conservatives have been coming out of the woodwork.

Former NAACP chapter president Rev. C.L. Bryant calls himself a “runaway slave,” which he defines as “persons, historically or presently, courageous enough to say no to the master’s housing, his food, or his direction, courageous enough to find the blessings of liberty for themselves.” Bryant is currently touring the country, promoting his conservative message and his documentary “Runaway Slave.”

Michael McNeely, the chairman of the Georgia Black Republicans, believes that the black Democrat vote is traditional, rather than foundational:

Today’s generation did not live through the struggles of the civil rights movement and does not connect with the idea of being “put back in chains” as Vice President Biden recently stated. Individuals in the black community won’t be so easily influenced into voting Democrat by politicians and other black leaders who use the unholy trinity of race, class and gender to play on the emotions and fears of blacks.

Though he is proud of his country for electing a black man, McNeely prefers substance over hue. In making the case for conservatism to black audiences in Georgia, McNeely poses a question, “For so long blacks have been counted as a ‘sure thing’ come election day for Democrats, but what have we gotten in return?”

K. Carl Smith founded the Frederick Douglass Republicans in 2009. Speaking as an ex-Democrat, Smith is currently traveling town-to-town across the country, explaining why blacks vote as they do and how to change their minds.

The Democratic Party has done a magnificent job of co-opting the history of the Republican Party. For example, many black Americans believe the Democratic Party has always championed the cause of black civil rights. Many blacks do not realize it was the Democratic Party, led by Senator Richard Russell, a Democrat from the state of Georgia, who launched a filibuster to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many blacks do not know that of the 18 senators who opposed the Voting Rights Act, 17 were Democrats. And, that 97% percent of Republicans senators for the act. Far too many blacks believe the people who bombed 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham were Republicans and not Democrats. They don’t know that the Democratic Party formed the Ku Klux Klan in 1866 to curtail the political influence of the Republican Party in the black community through terror and physical violence. The party that viciously exploited and enslaved my ancestors had masterfully deceived me to gain my vote and unquestionable loyalty.

“Unquestionable” is the key word. That’s how most black conservatives describe their former loyalty to the Democratic Party. Oddly enough, the first black president has allowed disappointed black voters to, at long last, question their loyalty.

I can already hear my liberal friends laugh and say, “Okay, you’ve got three black Republicans.”

Let them think that.

Yates Walker is a conservative activist and writer. Before becoming involved in politics, he served honorably as a paratrooper and a medic in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. He can be reached at yateswalker@gmail.com.