If there was ever any doubt that the Democrats take the black vote for granted, that doubt should have been put to rest when Barack Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus, “Stop whining!”
Have you ever before heard either a Democratic or a Republican leader tell his party’s strongest supporters, “Stop whining”?
Blacks have a lot to complain about, not just about this Democratic administration but about many other Democratic administrations, national and local, over the years.
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Unfortunately, black voters, like many other voters, often judge by rhetoric, rather than realities. When it comes to racial rhetoric, the Democrats outdo the Republicans by miles.
Even Ronald Reagan, the great communicator, had problems communicating with black voters, as I pointed out years ago in my book A Personal Odyssey (pages 274–278).
All this came back to me during a recent cleanup of my office, which turned up an old yellowed copy of the New York Times with the following front-page headline: “White-Black Disparity in Income Narrowed in 80’s, Census Shows” (July 24, 1992).
How many people in the media have pointed out that the black-white income gap narrowed during the Reagan administration, just as it has widened during the Obama administration? For that matter, how many Republicans have pointed it out?
The Reagan administration did not have any special program to narrow the racial gap in incomes. The point is that the kinds of policies followed in the 1980s had that effect, just as the kinds of policies followed by the Obama administration had opposite effects. But just listening to rhetoric won’t tell you that.
Over the years, some of the most devastating policies, in terms of their actual effects on black people, have come from liberal Democrats, from the local to the national level.
As far back as the Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression of the 1930s, liberal Democrats imposed policies that had counterproductive effects on blacks. None cost blacks more jobs than minimum-wage laws.
In countries around the world, minimum-wage laws have a track record of increasing unemployment, especially among the young, the less skilled, and minorities. They have done the same in America.
One of the first acts of the Roosevelt administration was to pass the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which included establishing minimum wages nationwide. It has been estimated that blacks lost 500,000 jobs as a result.
After that act was declared unconstitutional, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set minimum wages. In the tobacco industry alone, 2,000 black workers were replaced by machines, just as blacks had been replaced by machines in the textile industry after the previous minimum-wage law.
Fortunately, the high inflation of the 1940s raised the wages of even unskilled labor above the level prescribed by the minimum-wage law. The net result was that this law became virtually meaningless, until the minimum-wage rate was raised in 1950.
During the late 1940s, when the minimum-wage law had essentially been repealed by inflation, 16- and 17-year-old blacks in 1948 had an unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, slightly lower than that of whites the same ages and a fraction of what it would be in even the boom years after the minimum-wage rate kept getting increased by liberal Democrats.
Urban renewal was another big Democratic liberal idea. It destroyed mostly low-income minority neighborhoods and replaced them with upscale housing that the former residents could not afford. People by the hundreds of thousands were scattered to the winds, destroying community ties between families, neighbors, and local institutions from churches to family doctors to businesses.
Even when liberal Democrats try specifically to help blacks, the results often backfire. The political crusade for “affordable housing” and minority home ownership drew many blacks into homes they could not afford. The net result was an especially high rate of foreclosure and, in the end, black home-ownership rates lower than they were before the “affordable housing” crusade began.
Listening to political rhetoric often leads to opposite conclusions from those resulting from checking out hard facts — and not just for blacks.
A group voting overwhelmingly for one party is self defeating behavior. One party ignores them because they take the vote for granted and the other one ignores them because they won't get the vote. Diversity is a good attribute. You are no longer ignored.
This is as simple as the absolutes of the philosophies.
The Left wants "government" to take care of people.
The Right wants "people" to care of themselves.
Even if we were to expand off the absolutes,
the Right accepts their is a necessary role for government, but I don't think the Left believes there is a necessary role for the individual.
How people can be duped for so long into thinking they are inferior to another and need special help to compete "fairly" is not only sad, but insulting. Where is the righteous anger at those who have for so long professed to be helping them, while in fact they are hindering?
Some of you here are too young to remember the 1930's (as am I, but I read), the 50's and the 70's, but my question to all is - is it really White America that has continued to hold onto those racist and degrading practices, or is it Black America that has not moved ahead?
Satan designed the plan all along. The Bible says we see through the glass darkly and that our battle is against spiritual wickedness in high places. The destruction has been on purpose and the black people for the most part have gone along all too willingly. Like lemmings off a cliff.
Big gubment libs like Barry have done to the black family in 50 years what 100s of years of slavery could not. Reduce them to a spiritless client of the master with no hope for improvement only more hand-outs if they "perform" at the booth.
Take off your slippers you lazy good-for-nothings says the progeny of a African communist and an America hippie.
To think that all blacks in black communities and outside black communities support Barry Obama is misinformed. Sure, the numbers are small but they do exist. Blacks who do not support him, see him as an "intruder" and a narcissist who is clueless about leadership. All he does is regurgitate Democratic demagoguery.
As a small business owner in the service sector, I find it frustrating that the only conservative writers willing and able to describe the catastrophic impact of minimum wage laws on unemployment and the economy in general are Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.
It simply reinforces the notion that the conservative establishment really doesn't understand free market capitalism at the molecular level, usually because it has no collective experience at it.
The economy is smothered with regulations and compliance, and at the top of the heap is the minimum wage law, foolishly increased over 40% right before the downturn (2007).
Unfortunately, Repubs fear being demagogued over the issue and therefore refuse to address it.
"Unfortunately, Repubs fear being demagogued over the issue and therefore refuse to address it."
I agree. Fear is probably is probably the most widespread character quality of republicans, and establishment repubs are the MOST fearful species.
If fear was equivalent to speed in big cats, establishment repubs would be cheetahs.
I don't think there is a cure, removal is the best option. Interestingly, the non-caucasian and female varieties of repub are most reliably less fearful.
I was living between Bandung & Jakarta in Indonesia when they implemented the minimum wage laws. At the time, Bandung was not only the center of the high tech industry, it was the epic-center of manufacturing. In short, within weeks, you could visually see the closing of large manufacturing plants and the retail stores that sold all the ‘seconds’ that fail to meet export standards. Soon, the streets were flooded with the unemployed begging the government for jobs and to do away with the minimum wage laws to avail. Sadly, most of those manufacturing jobs have already located in China. Progress? I think not.
I am repeating myself with this post--but I'm also following my own advice.
One party wants racial minorities to become economically empowered. The other wants them to remain loyal voters. *That* is the simple message that Republicans should be beating like a drum.
I live in a black community; they're mostly good people who've had a hard struggle. They vote Democrat as a bloc. Their local representatives, councilmen, assemblymen etc. may often be good enough people, although many cheat them in countless ways. However, they listen to their constituents. It's politics. If republicans want the black vote, they need to earn it, as Gov. Christie did here, throwing so many political low-lifes in the slammer, a process I hope we continue here in NJ.
