“This post from March 2006 is, to my mind, just as relevant today. If you want to see some race-card playing and some race-baiting, just wait until the 2008 Presidential campaign gets into full swing earlier next year. The hypocrisy from the Democrats promises to be mind-numbing…” —
The Great White Shank

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Listening to Laura Ingraham this morning talking about this Washington Post article about certain African-American reactions to the Oscar-winning song and performance of “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”. Seems those interviewed in the article feel its yet another example of Hollywood seemingly searching out the worst in African-American culture:

“It was just like during the time when all the blaxploitation films were coming out with African Americans being portrayed as pimps and hos and gangsters,” said [Juaquin] Jessup, 51.

“It was another example of how they pick the worst aspects of black life and reward that. There are more important things in our culture that need focus more than the hardships of a pimp,” he said. “The only place many people see our culture is through movies and on television, and at the same time, this country is experiencing an influx of people coming over here from all over the world, and the only thing they see of black America through the media is . . . pimps and gangsters and all of that. It’s always some low-down brother or some welfare mother.”

Perhaps I’m going out on a limb here, but Mr. Jessup is alluding to something I’ve felt passionately about for a long time – that the primary mouthpieces of “progressive thinking” in this country: the Democrats, liberalism in general, the mainstream media, and the Hollywood entertainment industry are no friend to African- Americans. In fact, I would submit that liberalism in general, and the Democratic Party in particular, in fact do everything they can to keep African-Americans dependent on the federal and state entitlement programs upon which they base and seek to further their entire political philosophy and activism. Consider these questions:

1) Which minority suffers most from the abysmal quality of education doled out by failing inner-city public schools? The answer: African-Americans.
Yet, what party is so beholden to the public teachers unions that they’ll do anything and everything to prevent public funding for private education choices through the use of vouchers? The answer: Democrats.

2) Which minority suffers most from the breakdown of the family unit, where 70% of African-American children are born out of wedlock? The answer: African-Americans.
Yet, which party would be the first to come out against any effort to strengthen the institution of marriage as defined between a man and a woman, and, in fact, through aligned organizations like the ACLU, actively seek to undermine and undercut it every chance it gets through legislation and cries of “constitutional separation of church and state”? The answer: Democrats.

Now, let’s turn the tables on these arguments a little bit…

3) Which political party is primarily responsible for the whopping $7 trillion has been spent on poverty programs since Lyndon Johnson declared his “war on poverty” 40 years ago? The answer: Democrats.
Yet, which minority – despite the 80 or so poverty-related programs on which the government spends in the neighborhood of $500 billion annually – has seen no measurable improvement in structural poverty during that very same period? The answer: African-Americans.

4) According to a nationwide study released by the nonpartisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research (BACVR), what is the so-called “political leaning” of those US cities most dominated by impoverished urban populations? The answer: Liberal.
And, in these cities considered to be “most liberal”, what is the most common (in fact, overwhelmingly so) racial demographic found in the majority of their urban populations? The answer: African-American.

Now I’m not saying here that the problem of structural poverty amongst African-Americans in the US is either easily understood or, more importantly, easily rectified. What I am saying, however, is that liberalism in general, and the Democratic Party in particular, is not, nor has it ever been, a friend of African-Americans seeking to find solutions to the highly-complex problems they face both economically and culturally in this society. What I am doing is accusing the Democratic Party, its leadership, and its aligned interests (i.e., government employees, labor unions, the ACLU, and the NAACP, particularly) of wanting to do nothing to change the status quo and using their cohorts in the mainstream media to help demonize those who seek alternative strategies and approaches by playing the race card whenever they can.

You see, rather than being truly interested in finding ways to reduce poverty in the black community and develop strategies that reduce dependency on government programs and promote alternative approaches through free-market solutions and self-empowerment, the groups I’ve mentioned above seek only to reinforce and further institutionalize government social programs so the public rolls can be padded with more constituents and more government employees necessary to staff these bloated programs. Why would they want to do such a thing, you might ask? So that one day – and I think we’re getting closer all the time – there will be more public sector employees and constituents dependent on increased federal and state spending for social programs than there will be private sector employees and free market capitalists, making the whole thing a self-perpetuating organism where elections do nothing but reinforce the very structure they were originally designed to challenge and question.

At the risk of playing my own race card, I accuse the Democratic Party and the liberal/socialist/”progressive” philosophy it espouses to be nothing more than a 21st century plantation owner wanting to keep those down on the farm enslaved to him and increasingly dependent on him until they are no longer able to speak or think for themselves.

It almost worked.

Fortunately, as Polipundit’s Lorie Byrd wrote last week, there are signs that, increasingly, African-Americans are beginning to realize that they have long been taken for granted by institutional liberalism and the Democratic Party, and may be at least open to considering, if not the Republican Party directly, the philosophies it (and conservatism in general) stands for as a intriguing alternative to the status quo. Take her excerpt from a Washington Times article on what’s going on down in Maryland:

Black voters’ loyalty to the Democratic Party is no longer a certainty in Maryland, especially among young independent voters, several black leaders say.

“We might be the last generation of unabashed loyalists to the Democratic Party,” state Senate Majority Leader Nathaniel J. McFadden of Baltimore says. “The Democratic Party is no longer a monolith for the African-American community.”

…

Black political, business and religious leaders say a shift is occurring, especially among young voters who are less concerned with civil rights and more attentive to economic issues.

She concludes:

This story focuses on Maryland, but the trend is not limited to that state. As long as the Republican party can communicate their message on the economy, school choice and social issues, and they can recruit candidates like [MD senatorial candidate Michael] Steele and [PA gubernatorial candidate and former Pittsburgh Steeler Lynn] Swann, I see the trend continuing. Kanye West and the other fear and hate mongers can only fool just so many people for just so long.

If true, you can bet this trend would be Jesse Jackson’s, Howard Dean’s, and the Democratic Party’s absolute worst nightmare. Given the closeness of the last two presidential elections, any loss of their core constituency in electoral vote-rich battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota would spell doom for even the most centrist of Democratic candidates.

More importantly, it would portend a reversal of thinking of the past fifty years – that you can outspend poverty and defeat it through increased government spending, and that social programs trump the basic human need for self-reliance, self-motivation, and self-determinism in a free market economy and free-thinking society. For an African-American community starved to find it’s own unique identity and place in 21st century America and determine its own future here, that can only be a good thing.