It was just last week that the National Black Republican Association unilaterally absolved White Americans of their sins and guilt. But now it looks like they didn’t just do it out of the kindness of their hearts and are now expecting something in return, namely that Barack Obama issue an official proclamation apologizing for the Democratic Party's 150-year history of racism. And just to make it easier, the NBRA is put together its own draft version for him to use:
We, black American citizens of the United States and the National Black Republican Association, declare and assert:
WHEREAS, the healing of wounds begins with an apology, and the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices against black Americans during the past 150 years, nor held accountable for the residual impact that those atrocities and practices are having on us today,
[Dozens of purported examples of Democrats being racist over the last 150 years]
WHEREAS, the Democratic Party's use of deception and fear to intimidate black Americans into voting for Democrats is consistent with the Democratic Party's heritage of racism that included sanctioning of slavery and kukluxery - a perversion of moral sentiment among leaders of the Democratic Party; and the Democratic Party's racist legacy bode ill until this generation of black Americans,
NOW, THEREFORE, for the documented atrocities and accumulated wrongs inflicted upon black Americans, we submit this petition to the head of the Democratic Party, Barack Hussein Obama, for a formal proclamation of apology for the Democratic Party's 150-year history of racism.
For good measure, the NBRA also worked in its own unique explanation of the Republican Party’s so-called “Southern Strategy,” which it also cites as further proof that the Democrats are racist:
WHEREAS, Democrats expressed little, if any, concern when the racially segregated South voted solidly for Democrats; yet unfairly deride Republicans because of the thirty-year odyssey of the South switching to the Republican Party that began in the 1970's with President Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," which was an effort on the part of Nixon to get fair-minded people in the South to stop voting for Democrats who did not share their values, and who were discriminating against blacks.
Of course, as we’ve pointed out before both President Bush and former RNC chair Ken Mehlman have apologized for the party’s use of the Southern Strategy … but apparently it is the Democrats who should be apologizing for not commending Richard Nixon for finally getting voters in the South to stop discriminating against blacks.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the notoriously racist Bob Jones University has decided to apologize for its nearly fifty-year record of refusing admission to African Americans and its even longer policy against interracial dating:
Bob Jones University has apologized for racist policies including a one-time ban on interracial dating that wasn't lifted until nine years ago and its unwillingness to admit black students until 1971.
The private fundamentalist Christian school that was founded in 1927 said its rules on race were shaped by culture instead of the Bible, according to a statement posted Thursday on the university's Web site.
As the statement itself makes clear, the university blames its policies on a “segregationist ethos [in] American culture” that failed to “accurately represent” the true teaching of God and the Bible:
Bob Jones University has existed since 1927 as a private Christian institution of higher learning for the purpose of helping young men and women cultivate a biblical worldview, represent Christ and His Gospel to others, and glorify God in every dimension of life.
BJU’s history has been chiefly characterized by striving to achieve those goals; but like any human institution, we have failures as well. For almost two centuries American Christianity, including BJU in its early stages, was characterized by the segregationist ethos of American culture. Consequently, for far too long, we allowed institutional policies regarding race to be shaped more directly by that ethos than by the principles and precepts of the Scriptures. We conformed to the culture rather than provide a clear Christian counterpoint to it.
In so doing, we failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry. Though no known antagonism toward minorities or expressions of racism on a personal level have ever been tolerated on our campus, we allowed institutional policies to remain in place that were racially hurtful.
Apparently it was the “segregationist ethos” that was still rampant back in America in 2000 that lead Bob Jones University to forbid interracial dating because it would lead to one world government:
The one-world principle--every effort man has made, or will make, to bring the world together in unity--plays into the hand of Antichrist. This first began at the Tower of Babel, and it will culminate at Armageddon when the Lord returns to establish His rule of peace and harmony for a thousand years.
Bob Jones University opposes one world, one church, one economy, one military, one race, and unisex. God made racial differences as He made gender differences. Each race and each sex should be proud to be what God made it, and none should reproach the other.
It seems as if the Right has finally come up with an explanation for the role that African Americans played in the passage of the various anti-gay marriage amendments around the country last week: it was the result of blacks getting tired of gays comparing their quest for equality to the civil rights movement (or, as African American pastor Dwight McKissick likes to put it, comparing their sin to his skin.)
If black voters overwhelmingly reject the claim that marriage amendments like Proposition 8 are nothing more than bigotry-fueled assaults on civil rights, perhaps it is because they know only too well what real bigotry looks like. Perhaps it is because they resent the assertion that adhering to the ageless meaning of marriage is tantamount to supporting the pervasive humiliation and cruelty of Jim Crow. Perhaps it is because they are not impressed by strident condemnations of "intolerance" and "hate" by people who traffic in rank anti-Mormon hatemongering.
Or perhaps it is because they understand that a fundamental gulf separates the civil rights movement from the demand for same-sex marriage. One was a fight for genuine equality, for the right of black Americans to live on the same terms, and under the same restrictions, as whites. The other is a demand to change the terms on which marriage has always been available by giving it a meaning it has never before had. That isn't civil rights - and playing the race card doesn't change that fact.
And here is the same point from Matt Barber, who explains it all in the reasonable and classy manner we've all come to expect from him:
For decades now, well-organized, well-funded and highly influential "gay" political pressure groups have, with impertinence, hijacked the language of the authentic civil rights movement. In what amounts to a sort of soft racism, self-styled "queers" have disingenuously and ignobly hitched their lil' lavender wagons to a movement which, by contrast, is built upon the genuine and noble precepts of racial equality and humanitarian justice.
An illegitimate offspring of the '60s sexual revolution, the newfangled "gay rights" cult is today's postmodern, sex-centric cause célèbre. Its core tenets include, among other things, mandated moral relativism, social androgyny and forced acceptance of a pleasure-based, though demonstrably destructive, lifestyle. Apart from practitioners of "the sin that dare not speak its name," its devotees are in large part institutional fringe elitists confined to blue-state America who almost universally suffer the insufferable pangs of white guilt.
Like an addict jonesing for a hit, they long for that rush of self-righteous affirmation associated with belonging to something perceived as larger than themselves. Central to the movement's success is the ability to draft adherents who are easily manipulated through superficial slogans, appeals to emotion via anecdotal parades of horribles, and a mindless propensity to conform to nonconformity.
By drawing artificial parallels between the systematic persecution experienced by blacks over centuries past to the inherent aversion most have toward biologically unnatural, traditionally immoral and objectively perverse sexual behaviors, the homosexual lobby trivializes and diminishes the African-American struggle for civil rights. It's dishonest and offensive for people who choose to define their identity based upon aberrant sexual proclivities to compare sexual temptation and volitional sexual conduct to immutable and innocuous biological traits such as skin color ... Understandably, blacks want all this nonsense to stop.
Of course, the real explanation is a bit more complex, but if you are looking for an explanation that is simplistic and insulting, well, there you have it.
I wrote a post about Jesse Lee Peterson of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) last month, noting that he has managed to carve out a rather unique niche for himself as a black right-wing activist who defends racists while accusing other black leaders of being sell outs and race-baiters.
And so I guess it comes as no surprise that he is weighing in on Barack Obama’s historic election by proclaiming that black preachers who supported Barack Obama have not been called by God, have no relationship with God, and are consequently leading their congregations straight to hell:
"Ninety-six percent of black voters supported Barack Obama and the majority of these voters were influenced by black preachers to put race ahead of their country and their faith," said Rev. Peterson. "How can ministers who are supposed to lead their flock to Jesus Christ instead lead them to a socialist like Obama? The truth is that most black ministers don't have a real relationship with God and they are leading their congregations to hell. These blind leaders helped elect their black 'Messiah'. This 'Messiah' happens to be the most left-wing member of the U.S. Senate," said Rev. Peterson.
…
Rev. Peterson added: "For the past eighteen years I've said that most black preachers are not called by God, but instead are called by their mammas. If there was ever a time that this was the case, that time is now. In order for black Americans to turn around, they must drop their anger, and find the truth within themselves, not from corrupt, racist preachers or from a false black Messiah."
Days after President-elect Barack Obama’s rousing defeat over Sen. John McCain, American Values president and long-time McCain supporter Gary Bauer declared an end to racial tension in America.
Barack Obama’s election should also signal something to all those who have made race baiting their raison de ‘etre: dust off your résumés -- it’s time to find new work.
That includes Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whose race baiting has done a disservice to the black community by turning every grievance into yet more evidence of America’s endemic racism.
Nevermind that on the same day that more than 65 million Americans cast their vote for America’s first Black president, Baylor University students reported seeing a rope resembling a noose on a campus tree. Also on Election Day, three students hurled racial epithets at a University of Mississippi sophomore who was celebrating Obama’s victory.
Less than 24 hours later in Maine, two black figures resembling gingerbread men were found hanging by nooses from trees. And in North Carolina, where Obama was officially declared the winner of the state’s 15 electoral votes on Thursday, the Secret Service was called in to assist in the investigation of four North Carolina State University students who spray painted racist graffiti including “Shoot Obama” and “Kill that n----.”
In a report entitled “The State of Minorities: How are Minorities Faring in the Economy?,” the Center for American Progress found that African Americans are still lagging behind whites in income, unemployment, and poverty, among other categories. African Americans median income in 2006 was $32,132, compared to whites’ median income of $52,423 in 2006. In 2007, the unemployment rate of African Americans was at 8.3 percent compared to 4.7 percent of whites. And poverty? In 2006, 24.2 percent of African Americans were living in poverty compared to 8.2 percent of whites.
Home ownership. Education. Health care. I could go on.
Reality check for Gary Bauer: While Obama's victory clearly signals progress in the long arc of the American story, only willful ignorance could allow one to think it has ended racial tension.
The president of a San Bernardino County Republican club resigned after apologizing for distributing a newsletter with a caricature of Barack Obama on a fake food stamp surrounded by ribs, watermelon and fried chicken.
In a letter sent Wednesday to members of the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated, Diane Fedele said she was sorry for showing "poor judgment and lack of insight and sensitivity."
...
Fedele denied racist intent but in her letter defended the message: "The point, that has been lost in the subsequent discussion over images, was that Obama will 'take from the rich and give to the poor' and that we ALL would be buying food with his 'Obama Welfare Dollars.' An ideological statement, not a racial one."
The best part of all of this? The fact that the original image was reportedly made by a Democrat in order to satirize the Right's over-the-top attacks on Obama:
The Riverside Press-Enterprise said the cartoon was created by Tim Kastelein, a 31-year-old Minnesota Democrat who said he made it in a satirical attempt to make fun of right-wing pundits afraid of a Democratic presidential candidate.
The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center has unveiled a new ad highlighting the fact that between 1997 and 2006, anti-affirmative action gadfly Ward Connerly has "lined his own pockets with over $7.6 million from his two tax exempt non-profit organizations; American Civil Rights Institute and the American Civil Rights Coalition."
The BISC points to this recent article on Connerly from The American Conservative that sums up his career by explaining that while "his activism is not entirely cynical" he has somehow managed to acquire "wealth and fame for accomplishing nothing":
But don’t spend too much sympathy on Ward Connerly. The Right’s point man on affirmative action doesn’t need political successes to be a success. While his plans sputter and his former achievements are overturned, Connerly is still being handsomely rewarded. Once he received favored status from the conservative movement, his future was guaranteed. As an activist, Connerly has made millions opposing affirmative action. As a businessman and consultant, he has also made hundreds of thousands in large part because of it.
Between 1999 and 2005, Connerly’s nonprofits, the American Civil Rights Institute and the American Civil Rights Coalition, didn’t challenge a single affirmative-action law. Yet donations climbed to almost $2 million per year. The share that Connerly paid to himself, or to his private for-profit consulting firm, Connerly and Associates, also dramatically increased. In 1998, 22 percent of his nonprofits’ revenue was paid to Connerly in salary or to his firm. By 2001, Connerly’s salary and the fees charged by Connerly and Associates ate up 49 percent of the nonprofits’ combined revenue. Most of the money paid to the firm was listed on tax forms as “speaking fees.” In 2006, when Connerly took up a concrete goal in political activism—ending Michigan’s affirmative-action policies—the cut of nonprofit revenue paid to him and his firm rose to 66 percent of total receipts, nearly $1.6 million.
Connerly’s nonprofits employ him for 30 hours a week and two others full time. The nonprofits then hire him from Connerly and Associates to make speeches. In 2003, ACRI and ACRC paid him $314,079 while he managed two people. By comparison, that year the National Action Network, which receives about $1 million in public funds, only paid Al Sharpton about $4,000. The Claremont Institute, a neoconservative think tank in California, paid its top executive $132,000, and its staff is 9 times the size of Connerly’s. The Heritage Foundation paid its president $292,000 to manage a staff of over 180. The primary financial responsibility that Ward Connerly had at his nonprofits that year was paying his firm over $400,000 for Ward Connerly the consultant, Ward Connerly the speaker, Ward Connerly the political maven—and occasionally a security detail to guard him.
Following up on the racist “Obama Bucks” mailer we wrote about yesterday, the LA Times today has this quote from Chaffey Community Republican Women's Club President Diane Fedele explaining that it was not racist at all because she doesn’t have “racist eyes”:
Fedele said the mailer merely parodied the statements Obama made during a debate last summer and wasn't racist.
"If I was racist, I would have looked at it through racist eyes," she said. "I am not racist, which is why it probably didn't register."
Club member Kristina Sandoval agreed.
"None of us are racists," she said.
The use of watermelon, ribs and fried chicken was innocent, she said.
"Everyone eats those foods, it's not a racial thing."
How does one determine if they have “racist eyes” exactly? Maybe only if they are looking out through this?
The latest newsletter by an Inland Republican women's group depicts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken, prompting outrage in political circles.
The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."
The GOP newsletter, which was sent to about 200 members and associates of the group by e-mail and regular mail last week, is drawing harsh criticism from members of the political group, elected leaders, party officials and others as racist.
The group's president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club's meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."
"It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don't want to go into it any further," Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn't my attempt."
...
"I didn't see it the way that it's being taken. I never connected," she said. "It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else."
...
Sheila Raines, an African-American member of the club, was the first person to complain to Fedele about the newsletter. Raines, of San Bernardino, said she has worked hard to try to convince other minorities to join the Republican Party and now she feels betrayed.
"This is what keeps African-Americans from joining the Republican Party," she said. "I'm really hurt. I cried for 45 minutes."
...
The newsletter is not the first such episode Barajas has had to respond to this week. The Sacramento Bee on Wednesday posted an image it said was captured from the Sacramento County GOP Web site that showed Obama in a turban next to Osama bin Laden.
It said: "The difference between Osama and Obama is just a little B.S." The site also encouraged members to "Waterboard Barack Obama," a reference to a torture technique. The Sacramento County party took down the material Tuesday after being criticized.
Mark Kirk, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County GOP chairman, said he expects Chairman Gary Ovitt to also have a talk with Fedele and to attend the group's local meeting next week to discuss the issue with members, although the county GOP has no formal oversight role over the club. Kirk said these kinds of depictions hurt the party's ongoing efforts to reach out to minorities.
I wonder if you could use those Obama Bucks to buy the Obama Waffles they were selling at the Values Voter Summit.
Gary Bauer is complaining about the use of the “race card” and declares that John McCain is the real victim here. Bauer says that “the race card is used to cower conservatives into silence” and that the left “portrays any criticism of Obama as somehow racist.”
But the most interesting thing is this admission:
There are many ways to play the race card. One way is to exploit ancient prejudices and stereotypes of one race as inherently inferior to another. John McCain knows that one well.
He was the improbable victim of racism eight years ago when it was suggested to some South Carolina voters that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock. In fact, McCain’s adopted daughter, Bridget, is from Bangladesh. It’s the type of racism employed by the David Dukes of the world, and it diminishes us all.
But when I read the news that the McCain campaign had hired Tucker Eskew -- the Republican political hack who orchestrated a smear campaign against McCain's wife and daughter during the 2000 South Carolina primary -- it finally dawned on me: John McCain has adopted Gov. George W. Bush's South Carolina primary strategy.
Back in 2000, after McCain's surprising victory in the New Hampshire primary, George W. Bush and Karl Rove did two things: They adopted John McCain's reform message, claiming the Bush, not McCain, was a "reformer with results." And they went negative, attacking John McCain's record and character through numerous surrogates. Many, in the McCain campaign, including McCain himself, blamed Eskew, Bush, and Rove for spreading stories about Cindy McCain's drug use, about their adopted daughter Bridget's birth, and about whether McCain's Vietnam captivity had left him unbalanced.
Bauer seems to have a real memory problem regarding what happened during the 2000 election, which is odd considering that he was running for President at the time. He had ended his own campaign and endorsed McCain just days before the South Carolina primary, so surely he knows that McCain’s famous “agents of intolerance” speech was partially a response to the vicious attacks he had received in South Carolina … at least he should, since he helped him draft it.
Presumably, Bauer didn’t intend to compare Bush, Rove, and McCain’s own staffers to David Duke … but that is just what he did, nonetheless.
You just know that when Jesse Lee Peterson of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) releases a statement, it is going to be something ridiculous ... and once again he doesn't disappoint:
According to BOND ACTION, Inc, Founder and President, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, the Obama campaign and its surrogates have knowingly used race as a wedge issue to scare black voters and mischaracterize Republican positions on the issues. Rev. Peterson said today, "If the McCain campaign doesn't start aggressively combating these false allegations it will cost them the election" ... Rev. Peterson said, "Democrats are using the same racially charged scare tactics used by white segregationists in the past to antagonize the races. This is shameless and dangerous, and we have a moral duty to point it out."
Peterson, a right-wing African American activist, has built an entire career out of calling African American Democrats racists while defending white people who are actually ... you know ... racist, like Michael Richards:
By not allowing whites to express themselves, it only drives the problem underground and forces people to keep these emotions bottled up -- in essence, the politically correct culture is helping to create people like Michael Richards!"
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, Founder and President of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, issued the following statement today congratulating Duane “Dog” Chapman and his fans on the news that plans are in the works to resume production of the hit show “Dog The Bounty Hunter.” A&E suspended the show on October 31 after a tape of Duane using a racial slur to describe his son’s girlfriend was sold to the Enquirer. Since the incident, Duane Chapman has worked closely with conservative black organizations such as BOND and CORE to reach out to the black community.
The following is Rev. Peterson’s statement about this developing story: “Congratulations to Duane Chapman and his family. Duane is not a racist. We’re happy to learn that A&E is planning to resume production of ‘Dog The Bounty Hunter,’ which should have never been suspended.
Back in 2005, Max Blumenthal wrote a good profile of Peterson that explains the role he plays in the right-wing movement:
In late February, inside a sterile conference hall at Washington's premier conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, a crowd of no more than seventy took off their snow-flecked coats and settled in for an afternoon with a group of speakers billed as "The New Black Vanguard." Perched on a platform above the audience, the speakers promptly launched a barrage of attacks on the civil rights establishment and "the entertainment-industrial complex." At first the audience seemed disengaged, even a bit overwhelmed by the cacophony of blustery rhetoric. Then the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson piped up. "W.E.B. Du Bois was a communist, socialist pig," Peterson crowed. A few of his fellow panelists blanched at his overheated language. But once the shock subsided, laughter rippled through the previously mute crowd, followed by vigorous applause.
It was vintage Peterson. Throughout his fifteen-year career as a right-wing evangelical minister, Peterson has never shied from bombastic assaults on targets ranging from civil rights leaders to liberal Democrats to undocumented immigrants. But while Peterson's strident style may be unique, with his extremist politics he is merely playing the role of front man for a murky, well-funded network of white nationalist activists and right-wing Beltway operatives. By deploying Peterson to gatherings like the Heritage event and into the media, this coterie of conservatives have been able to apply a bold veneer of blackness over the brand of bigotry they find increasingly inconvenient to espouse on their own. Peterson has no professional or political accomplishments to speak of, beyond directing a small inner-city aid ministry and hosting a radio show syndicated on a handful of AM stations across the country. To his sponsors, though, that's irrelevant; it is his immunity from charges of racism that matters.
When the National Black Republican Association announced just a few weeks ago that it was going to place 50 billboards in Denver proclaiming to those attending the Democratic convention that "Martin Luther King Was A Republican" we were a bit skeptical, wondering where they were getting the money for this and, more importantly, how they planned on finding available space for the ads on such short notice. The NBRA says it has pulled it off, but the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports that the spots they secured are well away from the convention itself and the ads are unlikely to ever be seen by anybody attending:
Sarasota Republican Frances Rice may not be in Denver, but her presence is being felt. Rice, the leader of the National Black Republican Association, has dozens of billboards all around Denver proclaiming that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Rice said she wanted to do something to greet Democrats as they arrived in Denver. But the billboards have not been in prime locations near the two sports arenas where Obama and Democrats are scheduled to speak. Most of the billboards are just outside the downtown area, away from view of the convention goers.
One thing that has always confused me is the Right Wing’s obsession with recounting the racist history of the Democratic Party and the anti-slavery origins of the Republican Party that inevitably seems to end right around the mid-1960s.
For example, we wrote a report about right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton a few years back that examined a video he produced called “American History in Black and White” in which he diligently recounts the atrocities committed by early members of what was then the Democratic Party and ties them into positions held by current members of the party:
Barton claims that Democrats hailed the Dred Scott decision because it affirmed “their belief that it was proper to have slavery and hold African Americans in bondage.” He then takes it a step further, making a direct comparison between this decision and modern Democrats’ support of reproductive choice for women, claiming “Democrats have largely taken that same position in unborn human life, that an unborn human is really just disposable property to do with as one wishes. African Americans were the victims of this disposable property ideology a century and a half ago, and still are today … For over a century and a half, Democrats have wrongly argued that some human life is merely disposable personal property and black Americans have suffered most under this philosophy.”
On and on he went, until he reached the for passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, at which point his “history lesson” ended.
This tactic continues even today – just last week the Wall Street Journal ran a piece accusing the Democratic National Committee of posting a history of the party on its website that is “so sanitized of historical reality it makes Stalin look like historian David McCullough.” Not surprisingly, the WSJ piece received prominence on the website of the National Black Republican Association, whose leader, Frances Rice, has made it her mission to inform the world about what “Democrats have done in the past and are doing now to black people … They are keeping blacks in virtual slavery."
The obvious question raised by all of this is not why the Democrats are reluctant to discuss it, but why right-wingers who are obsessed with it never manage to explain the so-called “Southern Strategy” employed by Richard Nixon to win over traditional Southern Democrats who were angry by the party’s emerging pro-civil rights positions. As Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips explained it:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
Ronald Regan’s strategist Lee Atwater was even more blunt about the reasoning behind the strategy:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
Given that, beginning in the late 1960s, the GOP made a concerted and successful to court Southern voters who had traditionally been supporters of the Democratic Party which, as the Right loves to point out, was fundamentally racist, it has been confusing to understand how those who hammer this point rationalize this obvious disconnect. Usually, they do so by not talking about it.
But finally someone shed some light on this question when the NBRA’s Rice explained the history of the “Southern Strategy” at a sparsely attended conference earlier this month. You see, it was not that Nixon and the GOP were courting racist Southern voters; Nixon was really just trying to get the “fair-minded people in the South to stop discriminating against blacks”:
That strategy was designed to get the fair-minded people in the South to stop discriminating against blacks and to stop supporting a party that did not share their values. So those fair-minded ones who migrated to the Republican Party did so. They joined us, we did not join the racists.
If Rice's history is correct, how does she explain that both President Bush
and former RNC chair Ken Mehlman apologized for the Southern Strategy, with Mehlman admitting in 2005 that "Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
As we’ve noted severaltimes in the past, the National Black Republican Association is a fringe right-wing group that seems to have little in the way of staff or money, yet still manages to generate attention for itself every election cycle by running ridiculous ads and then waiting for the media to report on them:
[NBRA Chair Frances] Rice managed to put up a "Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican" billboard in South Carolina this year, and, leading up to the elections, ran a radio ad in swing states. In the ad a black woman says, "Dr. King was a real man," and another responds, "You know he was a Republican."
Rice said she wanted to start a conversation about the history of the Republican Party. The tactic proved its worth in media coverage. She ticks off the news outlets that covered the campaign.
"I spent a few thousand and garnered half a million in free coverage by my estimate," Rice said.
Given the success the NBRA has had with this tactic, they apparently have bigger plans in mind:
A Sarasota-based group that grabbed national headlines when it put up several billboards in Florida proclaiming "Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican" says it will be doing it again.
This time the National Black Republican Association says it would like to put up 50 of the controversial billboards in Denver. The group wants the billboard to be up in time for the Democratic National Convention which is scheduled for August 25th - 28th.
Hmm … considering that the convention is now less than two weeks away, that seems like an expensive and almost impossible task. But just to make sure, I called the advertising specialists at The Media Team in Denver to inquire about the cost and possibility of actually doing so.
When I told them that I was interested in finding out the cost and availability of 50 billboards in Denver for the week of the convention, they literally laughed at me. They then explained that the only things available at this late date would be Spanish language and low traffic billboards and, when I asked how much it would cost, hypothetically, to rent just one prime location billboard for the week of the convention, the estimate was $25,000, with the rates for other billboards ranging from $5,000 to $18,000 depending on location.
So unless the NBRA has several hundred thousand dollars on hand – and a time machine that allows them to go back and make reservations for the billboards before they were all booked – it looks like this is just another self-aggrandizing boast designed to make it seem as if the NBRA has any influence at all.
We’ve written about the National Black Republican Association a few times in the past, mostly to point out that they are a small, fringe group that tries to make a name for itself every election season by doing things like running ridiculous ads about how the "Democratic Party is a racist party.”
Over the weekend, the Sarasota Herald Tribune published a lengthy profile of NBRA Chairman Frances Rice and her antics, which seem to be accomplishing little more than angering and alienating her would-be political allies:
When hearing that the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Jim Greer, had expressed disappointment in her magazine, The Black Republican, which Greer had secured party money to publish, Rice dismissed it with a wave of her hand.
The magazine featured a picture of Ku Klux Klan members burning a cross, with the caption "Every person in this photograph was a Democrat."
Article titles included "Democrats embrace their child molesters," and "Top 10 Democratic sex scandals in Congress," and "Democrats wage war on God."
…
"Obviously we weren't consulted before she decided to do any of this," said Tony Cooper, president of the Tampa Black Republican Club. "It's a fruitless debate and it may conjure up more ill will toward the party. We should be spending money on debating the Democrats on the issues."
Said Deon Long, president of Florida's Federation of Black Republican Clubs: "We thought those billboards were asinine."
…
Greer, the state party chairman, said the party is no longer donating to the NBRA. While pictures of himself and Gov. Charlie Crist were on the cover of the magazine, along with favorable articles about them, Greer said he had no knowledge of the other content until after the magazine was published.
"Mrs. Rice has some very strong views on certain issues," Greer said. "It showed us that before we donate to anything, regardless of how it appears, the party needs to ensure it takes a look at all the content."
The article notes that Palm Beach County Republican Party donated $20,000 to start the NBRA back in 2005 and, since then, “nearly everyone else originally part of the NBRA … has since dropped out. The original board included eight members from around the country, and Rice's husband. In a matter of months, all the board members except Rice, her husband and Cadogan resigned.” Apparently the final straw came after Rice insisted on sending out a press release praising President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
Rice appears to run the organization with an iron fist, accusing those who disagree with her or not a being “a real Republican” and seemingly having a complete disregard for tax laws governing non-profit organizations, with the Tribune reporting that Rice has shuttered NRBA’s 527 and is relying on donations that have come through the NBRA’s non-profit 501c4 arm to engage in what appears to be partisan electoral work despite the fact that “under the IRS code, [501 c4s] are not allowed to help elect candidates or push partisan politics as their primary purpose.”
But Rice seems to have no regrets about her tactics or her role as a fringe, right-wing activist – in fact, she seems to thrive on it:
"This is the first time in my life that I have felt I am actually doing something about what the Democrats have done in the past and are doing now to black people," Rice said. "If the Democrats had left us alone after the Republicans freed us from slavery we wouldn't be having this discussion today. They are keeping blacks in virtual slavery."
get the right wing watch feed
