In an article headlined “Dems offer African-Americans false promises” (Great Neck News- November. 29, 2013) John Messina concedes that “conservatives have an image problem” with blacks.
Agreed!
And he correctly points out that since FDR blacks have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. Seeking an explanation, Messina blames the media for convincing many Americans “that liberals care and conservatives don’t.”
As an unrepentant liberal, I take that statement as an article of faith. If I thought for a second that conservatives were caring and compassionate, I’d never vote Democratic again.
Messina should have stopped while he was ahead.
But he then makes a series of statements which are, at best, misleading.
For example, he claims “Democrats…have been promising the African-American community paradise and have delivered Detroit, Camden and the south side of Chicago.”
Elaborating, he argues that Detroit with a population over 80 percent black has 11,000 unsolved homicides. These are real problems, but the Democratic Party is not responsible for them.
Who, then, are the real culprits?
Three landmark studies shed light on the plight of black Americans.
The first, An American Dilemma, by Swedish economist and sociologist Gunnar Myrdal points out “the stark contradiction between our…beliefs…in freedom, equality and justice and the actuality of society’s treatment of the Negro.” Myrdal’s contribution is to highlight the schizophrenic nature of America’s belief system vis-à-vis the blacks. Dorothy Newman and associates in “Protest, Politics and Prosperity: Black Americans and White Institutions” examines the period between 1940 and 1975.
She points to conditions such as menial jobs, starvation wages, the beating of blacks who attempted to register and vote, as well as Jim Crow laws throughout the south as commonplace in the U.S. In a monograph – the 1977 Annual Report of the Carnegie Corporation, Alan Pifer writes that “blacks are still materially worse off than whites, that racial prejudice and discrimination are still pervasive, and that new, more subtle barriers to further progress are being erected.” None of these scholars lays the blame for our racial woes at the feet of any political party.
However, an examination of the today’s political scene might lead one to conclude that it is the Republicans who, by their statewide attempts to suppress blacks from voting, are the enemy of racial progress.
It is indisputable that both liberals and conservatives use facts selectively, so I shouldn’t be too surprised that Messina fails to mention the two most important pieces of legislation enacted since the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.
I refer here to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The former enforced the Constitutional right to vote, provided relief against discrimination in public accommodations, and established the Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity.
A year later, Congress passed and the president signed the Voting Rights Act which led to the mass enfranchisement of blacks especially in the south. And who deserves credit for these pieces of landmark legislation?
None other than two Democratic presidents – John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
There is one more glaring omission in Mr. Messina’s letter. The current occupant of the White House is Barrack Obama, the first black president of the United States who just happens to be a Democrat.
And who, from day one, has done everything within their power to sabotage the programs and policies of the Obama administration as well as to question his place of birth? The Republicans, of course!
When it comes to civil rights, neither party has a monopoly on virtue, but to single out the Democrats as guilty makes no sense.
Nor do statements like “Though blacks make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population more blacks were arrested nationwide for robbery, murder and manslaughter…than whites.”
You cannot make political allies when you blame the victim.
The problem America faces is not one of black incarceration and family breakdown, but the institutionalized racism which causes these problems.
Dr. Hal Sobel
Great Neck
