Pandering to blacks By Walter E. Williams Mar 8, 2006 Presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton used Rev. Al Sharpton's Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration to, as Professor Shelby Steele explains, "whistle for the black vote by pandering to the black sense of grievance." In response to a question from the audience: "I need you to tell us what distinguishes Democrats from Republicans right now," Sen. Clinton answered, "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about . . . " Though the audience was largely black, I doubt whether any of the attendees had any plantation experience. Sen. Clinton was simply employing the Democrats' political rope-a-dope for blacks. As Professor Steele asks in his Wall Street Journal editorial, "Hillary's Plantation": "Must blacks have their slave past rubbed in their face simply for Hillary Clinton to make a little hay against modern-day Republicans?" Steele also asks, "Does she really see us as she projects us -- as a people so backward that our support can be won with a simple plantation reference, and the implication that Republicans are racist?" Sen. Clinton is not alone with such demeaning pandering. Before a predominantly black audience, during his 2004 presidential bid, Sen. John Kerry said, in reference to so many more blacks in prison than college, "That's unacceptable, but it's not their fault." Aside from Kerry being factually wrong about more blacks being in prison than in college, his vision differs little from one that holds blacks as a rudderless, victimized people who cannot control their destiny and whose best hope depends upon the benevolence of white people. I wonder whether Kerry would have told a white audience that jailed white people were faultless. Kerry's other black-audience-only gambit was seen after he addressed the NAACP's 95th annual convention in Philadelphia; he gave the audience the black power clenched-fist salute. The subtitle to Professor Steele's article is "Hillary Clinton reveals her fear of Condi Rice." He explains that Democrat liberalism has survived decades past the credibility of its ideas because it captured black resentment as an exclusive source of its power. That power will be gone the very day that a significant number of blacks cease to be a people of grievance. This is potentially a Republican advantage. The Democrats and the liberal establishment know that, which is why they vilify high-profile blacks who aren't filled with resentment and grievance. There are quite a few blacks in charge of stoking the fires of resentment and grievance. First, there's former NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, who said of George W. Bush, "We have a president that's prepared to take us back to the days of Jim Crow segregation and dominance." NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said President Bush has appeased "the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing and has chosen Cabinet officials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection." During the 2000 presidential campaign, Rev. Jesse Jackson regaled black audiences by telling them that a Bush win would turn the civil rights clock back to the days of Jim Crow. No one bothers to question these people about the accuracy of their predictions. If Condoleezza Rice threw her hat into the presidential race, it would be Clinton's worse nightmare. Ms. Rice's vision represents triumph rather than grievance. Steele says that by growing up in the segregated South, Ms. Rice might have claimed title to a grievance identity, but she's chosen the older black tradition where blacks neither deny injustice nor permit themselves to be defined by it. Blacks like Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice are of no value to modern liberalism or the Democratic Party. Why? If blacks come to embrace triumph, rather than grievance, the wound to liberal Democrats would be mortal. It wouldn't take much of a desertion of the black vote to make Democrat hopes of recapturing Washington a permanent pipe dream. Since 1980, Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, VA as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics.
The Black vote no longer matters. It did not matter in the last two Presidential elections and it won't matter in the next. The Latino vote has become the grand prize for both political parties. Blacks joke that they don't vote, but that joke is actually true. The Black population only unites when they have someone that they can get behind on issues to their community. I'm not sure, but the only politician that I can think of, that excited the Black community was in IL. As for Rice, she is not incompetent, she is worse, she is ineffective. Putting Rice on the platform would be the biggest mistake the Republicans could ever make. The Black community really needs to reinvent themselves politically. The culture clash between the old Civil Rights movement and the young Blacks of today is very real. Hip Hop has caused a real rift between the generations and until the community figures out how they can unite, their vote won't really matter.
Blacks do vote, they vote in high numbers and are the only reason the democrats have ANY seats in congress. Rice has more competance in her pinky finger than all the democrats combined. She is a self starting, hard worker, the fact she is also black makes her the most dangerous person in America in the minds of democrats. I couldn't agree more. More Cosby's and less Sharptons.
People who preach it or people who create it? (I am thinking of a word that starts with R) President Bush did not get the memo about how the Republican party used to stand for small government.
The is no such thing as the "black community". If you believe there is, please define it for me. So you are speaking for all black people now? That's a big role to fill. Who bestowed it upon you?
Tell me about it, that is one very large difference of opinion I share with Dubya. Pisses me off to see the money get spent like it does...
What we need to make sure is that everyone has the chance to succeed regardless of race and stop the whole "you are victims, America owes you" shit. If politicians think America owes anyone, then they should start setting an example and pay something out of their own pockets.
It's the old hand up verses hand out conflict. Since we are on the subject of succeeding, who in our country does not have this ability? Who is at fault? I will give you an example. Let's imagine a woman who lives in one of the worst areas of our country and takes welfare to get by. She's adapted to the slum lifestyle and one day she gets pregnant. She has a son. He never amounts to anything, ends up slinging crack on the street and dies in a gun battle. Who's at fault? Is the government at fault? Why?
Which has me bewildered to no end given that if not for Republicans, there would still be colored laundry mats, drinking fountains, and back seats on the bus. Independant thinker. Sharpton is like Jesse Jackson on drugs.
It's just a god-awful mess. I have been held up (two guys, pistols on either side, years ago); so has my wife. My blood boils when I think of gang members and has informed much of the last decade and a half of my life. However, while working for a Chicago brewery (Goose Island), I got to know a lot of guys on the packaging line - many of them with the trademarks adorning their faces - tattoo tears, the works. I let them know in no uncertain terms what I thought of them, by definition, for what they took part in, and made it clear that if they crossed me, there'd be no talking. However, I learned, over time, how most of those kids were forced to choose - not between a life of crime and the straight and narrow, but among relative levels of crime, and allegiances based on crime. One kid flat out told me - "by the time I was 5, I had to decide which gang I'd run with. No choice in whether - just which. If I didn't, I was dead by 6." There is no safe harbor or fence sitting among these kids. They must choose crime, or die. At least this is true for a huge swath of kids I ran across. I have seen 7 year old kids comparing pistols not 20 yards from my home in Chicago, ostensibly "one of the quietest" for crime, according to CPD statistics. In other words, a helluva mess. Where does it start? Government? Parents? Absent fathers? Probably some portion of all the above - but where it does not start is with that little kid.
Unfortunately, while it does not start with the little kid, it ends with him/her, because he/she is likely to contribute to one or more little kids who are born into that environment and the cycle continues forward and grows. It's convenient to blame the government for our problems. The initial blame has to fall on the parent(s). If we decide to blame the government, what are we blaming them for? What, specifically and logically, can the government do to help the situation?
I've read alot of Walter E. William's articles in the Western Standard, as well as on townhall.com. He has always struck me as very intelligent, and level-headed. I have always enjoyed the no-nonsense way he has treated racial issues. Thanks for postin the article Henny - I hadn't read this one yet!
I have always wondered why blacks vote for democrats. I realize the whole cival rights thing from 30 years ago but since then what have democrats really done for blacks other then use there votes to elect rich white men who are only looking out for there own best interest.
Democrats are using the "everyone is against you except us" game when it comes to talking to minorities. Which is completely false. I believe that the African American community is no longer buying into it as they used to. It also has a lot to do with Kennedy I believe, he was considered a civil rights advocate.