Junto Boys

PLANTATION POLITICS II

The opposition to affirmative action has been labeled as racist by supporters of the idea. It’s painted as necessary discrimination in order to level the playing field after hundreds of years of oppression. But the fervent support is really borne out of white liberal guilt, the kind that comes after being caught doing nothing for so many years.

The war in Iraq and the current reaction to the liberation of an enslaved country should bring tears to the eyes of liberals, but they’ve never cared about going out on a limb to save people. For years and years Jim Crow laws existed in the south under southern Democrats because northern Democrats causally looked the other way in order to have a ruling coalition. Wilson, FDR and Truman knew their days were over had they overtly opposed that wing of the party. When the 60s and Lyndon Johnson shifted the nature of the Democrat Party, those same Democrats that were either overt racists or indifferent on the issue suddenly became the great protectors of black people while casting the party that freed the slaves as racists and bigots. It was a decent slight of hand and that history is seldom recollected by our gallant free press.

Besides the fact that affirmative action is contrary to the color-blind society that we praise MLK for supporting, AA hurts the people most it purports to help. AA makes it more likely that kids will be accepted to kind of schools where they aren’t prepared for the work. It makes it more likely that kids who could have graduated in a somewhat less prestigious university quit school altogether.

Senator Clinton’s remarks about the plantation remind me of why the Democrats are currently in the minority. The affirmative action and racial representation that Democrats have gained by suing companies that were suggested employ too few blacks eventually spilled over into gerrymandering congressional districts to insure black representatives. These measures were supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans, but Republicans have benefited the most, because the white moderate Democrats that once controlled the swing votes in congress can no longer get elected without the safe black voting blocks that no longer exist. By lumping black voters together, Republicans have easily won a majority of the demographics that were left to gobble up. Political affirmative action turns out to be no great help either.

The Congressional Black Caucus should be taking a lesson from the U.S. Senate and the gang of 14 specifically. 14% of the senate ostensibly controls who gets appointed on federal courts. What if the CBC renounced their membership in the Democrat Party immediately after the 2006 elections and decided that they would build a coalition with either party depending on the issue at hand. They could act as their own gang of 14. Now it’s true that Republicans would still hold a majority, but that majority would be much more open to the concerns of the CBC if their support were up for grabs. And though the media barely reports it, there are issues that the average black voter agrees with the average Republican. For instance, a majority of black voters support the idea of racial profiling in airport screenings of terrorists by a margin higher than white voters. They also support the idea of school choice and limits on late-term abortion among other things.

The problem, of course, is that the CBC is made up of individuals that are connected Democrats. Their identity of party outweighs their identity to the race issues they frequently site. The clapping at Hillary’s speech was done by a bunch of people who know that the House isn’t a plantation, but they also know that such rhetoric is a good substitute for actual work on issues that really matter to their constituency. If you help the Democrats demonize Republicans you can better justify your lock step march with a party that only pays lip service to human freedom and the real issues that concern black voters.