Why African Americans Are Devoted Democrats by Bob Hellmann As a pastor of 40 years, I’ve come to see and believe that African Americans are certainly some of the most spiritually powerful members of the Body of Christ on earth today. I don’t think that America can be saved or turned around without them. I also believe that a political change in the African American community would go a long long way to setting America right! But there is a problem, a big problem. African Americans have been so deeply indoctrinated to love the Democratic Party and hate the Republican party, that political change seems impossible. Why are our African American friends, relatives, and neighbors so committed to being Democrats? I’ve done a great deal of reading and study. One of the resources I’ve drawn from is the slave narratives, written before and after 1865. These histories are interviews of slaves and former slaves, and were written verbatim. In the histories mentioned above I learned that from the moment of the Emancipation Proclamation, through the end of the civil war, and even years afterward, African Americans developed the belief that the Federal Government was going to give them things, such as free land, food, mules, etc. Indeed, they did deserve it! But, the Federal Government ended up giving them nothing. In fact, according to the narratives, when the freed slaves came into contact with Federal Troops, many expected that they were going to be fed and compensated on the spot. That didn’t happen, in fact, the federal troops many times did not even give food to the freed slaves. Here developed a couple of mentalities within African American culture. (1) The federal government owes us something. (2) The federal government cares for us. Coming out of slavery the second belief was a comforting one, albeit, a false one. The truth is that the feds didn’t really care at all about the ex-slaves. So, passed down for many many generations now is the thought and feeling, on the part of many African Americans, but not all, that the government owes us, or to put the belief another way, “We were mistreated and we are now entitled to financial help and aid in every possible way.” I’m not arguing for or against that, I’m just stating a mindset. Now, I’m jumping the gun here, but in 1964 President Lyndon Johnson basically says to African Americans, “Hey, we Democrats are going to help you and give you the aid you need and deserve.” Johnson was no lover of black people and his motives were purely political. I apologize for the following quote but it’s needed here. President Lyndon Johnson, 1963, “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference…I’ll have them n****s voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.” Johnson, a big racist, turned African Americans into Democrats, for political purposes, not out of genuine compassion. Remember, during those same days, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was making a big difference in America and he was a Republican! But Johnson, unwittingly, pushed the two buttons that had been vital for generations of African Americans. (1) The fed is finally going to give us aid, and, (2) The government cares. As you can see from Johnson’s remarks neither point was true, but it APPEARED true. The perception was born that the Democratic Party is concerned about poor people and minorities. Perception is not reality, but the Democrats play up this perception at every election. I posted this previously, but when President Obama was elected two African American women came into the office euphoric. They said to one another in front of me, “Now we are all going to get free houses and cars!” That was their perception! I believe a case could be made that the Democratic Party uses African Americans for the votes, rather than helps them. One young African American man recently said with great passion and frustration, “Obama, you haven’t helped us or made a difference at all!”The aid promised to African Americans is not being blocked by the Republicans, although, some of it may be, it is mainly being redirected, by the President, to Muslim nations. That is no secret. (Concerning LBJ perhaps you saw in the news this week that a secret diary of Jacquelyn Kennedy Onasis’s revealed the startling fact that she believed that LBJ was responsible for her husbands murder in Dallas.That’s the kind of man Johnson was.) American has not been good to African Americans. Sorry if you don’t like that but it is the truth. Nothing will open your eyes to how horrible African Americans were treated, decades after the civil war, like watching an old Shirley Temple movie. My God, your mouth will drop open at how racist those movies were! This racism lasted until Dr. King came on the scene in the 1960’s, one hundred years after the civil was over! (Before someone takes me to school let me say, yes, yes, I know racism still exist today.) The second reason African Americans are devoted Democrats is that the majority of African Americans see themselves as poor, needy, and underprivileged victims. I want to emphasis this part of the statement, the majority SEE THEMSELVES as poor, needy, and underprivileged. So we are talking about self image here. Given their experiences in America, can anyone really blame them? I don’t think so. Concerning party affiliation we have the perfect storm, that being a party that is courting the black vote, as they call it, by promising all kinds of government money, and African Americans who see themselves as poor and are more than ready for the federal government to compensate them through government programs. The Republicans, on the other hand, don’t court the black vote by promising government assistance. Republicans are more interested in building private enterprise, that meaning businesses. Republicans want a small federal government, a strong US military, and a thriving economy where everyone who wants to work can find a good job. So the Republicans are the dirty dogs to the African American community, a community that sees themselves as needing government help. We have to hand it to the Democrats. They have succeeded at promoting the perception of themselves as champions of the poor, and at promoting the perception of Republicans as the party of the rich, who doesn’t care about the poor. Those two beliefs are ingrained in concrete within American political culture. Neither perception is truth. But that is what marketing is all about-promoting a perception in spite of truth. For an example, it has been proven, scientifically, over and over again that in the United States tap water is as clean or cleaner than bottled water. That’s the truth. The consumer doesn’t care about truth but about perception. Bottled water is perceived to be healthier and cleaner than tap water, and bottled water cost 17,000% more! But people buy it like crazy! PERCEPTION! People are committed and devoted to perception. Have you seen recent photos of Detroit? It looks like a war zone. Detroit has been under Democratic control for decades. But like the bottled water, truth and reality don’t matter. People buy and vote perception! My goal in this blog is to encourage everyone of every ethnicity to put aside perceptions and take a look at reality for yourselves. Question status quo political beliefs. And by all means, lets not allow television or the media to tell us what or who to believe. If Dr. Kings dream, of a unified society, could only come to pass for us, politically, there is nothing we could not do; nothing we could not accomplish, together! Together, and only together, can we make this a better world for our children and grandchildren.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 21:55:31 +0000