The Black Conservative
Blogs for Bush
La Shawn Barber has a long and interesting article on her blog about the differences between black conservatives and black liberals. As usual, Ms. Barber pulls zero punches:
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But we “black conservatives” know what we stand for has nothing to do with preserving human subjugation and racism and everything to do with being responsible for our own behavior and striving to be men and women of high character no matter what we face.
Clegg says that Dimensions is “relentless in criticizing black conservatives,” but notes one exception. A writer named Sherri Smith gives the matter a more evenhanded treatment.
Here is where we get to the meat of what separates the black conservative from the black liberal. The concept of self-help is prevalent in conservative thought. Smith writes that conservatives also believe the individual is not created by his race category, that America is a land of opportunity, that whites are not an omniscient power, that knowledge comes from individual reasoning rather than collective awareness, etc.
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It is, to say the least, very difficult for a white American to write on the subject of race in America today. A white American has two choices - write in accordance with liberal dogma that America is pervasively racist and gain the plaudits of the mind-numbed leftist elite, or write the truth of the matter and be called a racist. What is one to do?
The answer, more and more often, is to stay away from the subject and, additionally, thank God for the black conservatives who can bring the subject up. But that is to take a rather cowardly way out - all of us Americans must engage in this debate and bring forth as much of the truth as possible.
On a fundamental level, the Black Conservative is just the Black American; in poll after poll it has been shown that solid majorities of black Americans back the same thing as solid majorities of all other American groupings, especially white Americans. For Americans, black and white, taxes are too high, goverment spending is out of control, schools are a disaster, gay marriage is anethema, abortion is (at best) a sad necessity, the military must be kept strong, more cops are needed on the streets, etc, etc, etc. With the general community of opinion, however, comes the gigantic disconnect - white America generally supports the conservative political Party (the GOP) which tends to agree with its views, while black America overwhelmingly supports the liberal political Party (the Democrats) which believes that taxes are too low, government spending is an unquestioned necessity, schools just need more money, gay marriage is acceptable, abortion is a positive moral good, the military is a threat to peace, cops are worse than crime, etc, etc, etc...
The dichotomy is brought about not by racism - but by the perception of racism; specifically, the perception that racism is inherent in the GOP and thus no sane black person can back the GOP. In 22 years as a Republican, I've yet to come across one who expressed a racist opinion - I guess there might be such out there, somewhere...but if it were all-pervasive as liberal propaganda makes it, I should have run across at least a few overt examples. I haven't - and it's likely that I shan't ever; it is my view, indeed, that the number of genuine rascists in America probably totals no more than one or two million out of a population rising towards 300 millions. And yet 40 years of relentless propaganda in favor of the concept GOP=Racist has implanted itself quite firmly in the minds of a very large majority of black Americans, and no small minority of non-black Americans.
This was able to happen largely because of the MSM - the blogosphere has taken such a grip on American journalism that its already getting hard to remember how depressingly uniform our media was even just a few years ago; and back when the GOP=Racist ideal was being implanted in our society the power of the MSM was quite monolithic. By selectively choosing only those black Americans who would push the GOP=Racist mantra, the MSM ensured that no one, certainly not black Americans, would ever hear that there were other concepts out there.
There have always been black conservatives, but until very recently it was very hard for their voices to be heard. As an aside, the MSM did this because it fit their worldview - really it was nothing more than intellectual laziness; rather than find out what black Americans wanted and thought, it was easier just to fall back on cliche's taught in college and then megaphone them out to the broad masses.
The New Media now gives us our chance to shake up the status quo and demonstrate to black America that their inclinations are best served not by lock-step support of the Democrats, but instead by selectively applying their political power to either Party as best serves their actual interests. The rise to prominence of people like Ms. Barber is the harbinger of a new dawn in American politics - a day when we'll start to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
Posted by Mark Noonan
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