On the Verge: Black and Republican—They Still Don't Mix

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This is an interesting piece, written by a woman for a website which is devoted largely to black women everywhere. You need to register to read the rest of the article, but it's a free site.


The GOP claims that it's trying to attract the African-American vote, but Jill Nelson finds the evidence in short supply

It's fitting that around the time all of the front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination declined to participate in a debate focusing on Black issues, associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas embarked on a publicity tour for his memoir, My Grandfather's Son. This poster boy for Black Republicanism, who grew up in a small town in segregated Georgia in the 1950s and was directly and indirectly affected by legalized segregation and racism, seems committed to using neither the Constitution nor legislation as a means of addressing racial disparities.

Thomas, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by the first President George Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 1991 after hearings in which Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment, has written a bitter, grudging book in which he attacks those who participated in what he called his high-tech lynching. But the darts he throws in that tome pale in comparison to the damage done by his conservative judicial rulings in areas like criminal justice, school desegregation, and affirmative action.

What Has the GOP Done for Us Lately?

Apparently, Thomas's example and record haven't inspired many of us to switch parties, because the overwhelming majority of African-Americans vote Democratic. (In the 2004 presidential election, 88 percent of Blacks who cast a vote picked John Kerry.)

Republican Party operatives and conservative pundits bemoan this state of affairs. Their typical spin is that the masses of Black Americans are behaving like uninformed Election Day sheep: manipulated, duped, and not thinking for themselves. Yet absent any concrete actions by the GOP to actually attract a significant number of Black votes--and given recent actions by this year's crop of Republican hopefuls--it's unlikely that any of them will reach even the 11 percent of the vote that George Bush got in 2004.

http://www.niaonline.com/NiaFiles2/feature_article_more.php

[AndyA]

1. _______________ and Republican...fill in the blank.

GAY and Republican

BLACK and Republican

FEMALE and Republican

CHRISTIAN and Republican

None of them work, they are all contradictions based on the GOP's policy of delegating gays, blacks, and females to second rate citizen status. And there's certainly nothing Christian about passing judgement on others and then condemning them.

No responsible gay person, black person, female, or Christian would support the Republican Party because of what it stands for.

[HughBeaumont]

4. Young and Republican.

Middle Class/Working Poor/Poor/Impoverished and Republican.

Yep, don't work for anyone.

[bluestateguy]

2. I have literally never met a black Republican

I see them on TV all the time, and the party claims that they are doing so well with black people, yet I have never seen nor met one in person.

[HughBeaumont]

5. There were two in the group of GW College Republicans in DC at the Sept protest.

Young people of all backgrounds defending the Failure Fuhrer is a pathetic sight indeed.

[pissnoffrethugs]

3. White and Fascist

tend to go with republican quite nicely.