Why do blacks always vote Democrat (The GOP seeing red and are Dems giving us the Blues)

Recently on CNN's Situation Room hosted by Wolf Blitzer, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain an African-American said that most blacks in our country are brainwashed into not being open-minded about voting for the (Grand Old Party) GOP also known as the Republican party.

The former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza said, “I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative.” He added, “So it’s just brainwashing and people not being open-minded, pure and simple.”

For the record, I think Hermain Cain is a mis-informed person, who lacks the knowledge of his history. He may be smart business wise, but socially he has a total disconnect with the plight of the African-American struggle. Just because he's black doesn't mean he understands the black struggle. Just my opinion.

However, I myself have asked this question. Why do we blacks always seem to vote democrat regardless of the candidate. Speaking for myself I am an independent, I am not devoted to either party. However, I have never voted Republican in a presidential race, but I have refrained from voting because I did not like the Democratic candidate, and I thought the republican candidate was even worse. I have however voted Republican in local and state races. In Michigan I voted for republican Dick Devos over the Democrat Jennifer Granholm for govenor. And now my friends see why I voted that way (Thanks Jennifer) <--- enter sarcasm here.

I remember growing up and my and aunts and older cousins people in church and people in the community who were at the age to vote would say "Always vote Democrat, they are for black people" That was pretty much the answer or explanation. It was never fully explained, I would remember seeing picture with Dr. Martin luther King, JFK and Jesus Christ on the same photo, so me being young I was trying to make the connection. I wasn't sure if MLK was the 1st black president, if JFK was Jesus cousin, or if Jesus ordained them 2 to come save black people. So with that in mind I think it's high time we explained the history of the Democratic & Republican parties.

The Republican Party was formed in 1854 for the express purpose of abolishing slavery. Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoted the passage of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery. As the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican party, Lincoln came under attack from all sides. 

Lincoln had hoped to resolve the slavery dispute by compromises with the Southern Democrats that would gradually end slavery. But, not wanting to lose the economic advantage of slavery and believing that blacks were less than human, the Democrat slave holders seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Lincoln had no recourse but to go to war, to preserve the Union.

The Civil War was the bloodiest war ever fought on American soil. Millions of Northern troops put their lives on the line to free the slaves. The war lasted for nearly 4 years and was finally won by Lincoln’s Federal troops, led by General Ulysses S. Grant. However, just six days after the surrender of Confederate commanding General Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was shot and killed by a Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Andrew Johnson, a democrat , succeeded Lincoln after his death. Although strongly urged by Republicans in Congress to sign the Civil Rights bill, Johnson broke decisively with them, vetoing the bill on March 27, 1866.

U. S. Grant, a Republican, succeeded Johnson. As president for two terms, Grant made many advances in civil and human rights. In 1869 and 1871, he signed bills promoting black voting rights and prosecuting Klan leaders. He won passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave freedmen the vote. The Force Acts, also signed by President Grant, helped protect the voting rights of African-Americans. The Force Acts were mainly aimed at limiting the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. Through the Acts, actions committed with the intent to influenced voters, prevent them from voting, or conspiring to deprive them of civil rights, including life, were made Federal Offenses.

One of the reasons I have asked myself this question is because most African-Americans are deeply religious, most of us are devout Christians and  people of faith, and we tend to or portray that our belief in God is what dictate our descisons or behaviors. And you would think that our beliefs would align with our white Christian brothers and sisters. You would think our social beliefs would match with our white counter parts. However, what I have realized is that when it comes to politics, African-Americans religious beliefs and social voting records do not match. But to be fair neither does conservative white Republicans.

Right-winged Conservative Republicans

1. Support the presevation of life, but is staunchly in support of the death penalty

2. Support the idea of personal free choice, hate big government interferring in the private sector. But support goverment interferring in the private choices of women when it comes to abortion.

3. They don't women to abort a child if she feels she can't financially support it, but they want to eradicate social programs that would help her with the child if she kept it like they wanted.

4. They are against Sharia Law (Islamic Law) in other countries, but they want prayer in schools, the 10 commandments publicly displayed in government buildings.

But what Hermain Cain also failed to realize is that people and ideas change overtime. Blacks didn't just jump on the Democratic band wagon for no apparent reason.

Blacks mostly voted Republican from after the Civil War and through the early part of the 20th century. That’s not surprising when one considers that Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, and the white, segregationist politicians who governed Southern states in those days were Democrats. The Democratic Party didn’t welcome blacks then, and it wasn’t until 1924 that blacks were even permitted to attend Democratic conventions in any official capacity. Most blacks lived in the South, where they were mostly prevented from voting at all.

The election of Roosevelt in 1932 marked the beginning of a change. He got 71 percent of the black vote for president in 1936 and did nearly that well in the next two elections, according to historical figures kept by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. But even then, the number of blacks identifying themselves as Republicans was about the same as the number who thought of themselves as Democrats. This can be greatly attributed to "The New Deal" when FDR implemented social security, and other social welfare benefits
 
It wasn’t until Harry Truman garnered 77 percent of the black vote in 1948 that a majority of blacks reported that they thought of themselves as Democrats. Earlier that year Truman had issued an order desegregating the armed services and an executive order setting up regulations against racial bias in federal employment.

Even after that, Republican nominees continued to get a large slice of the black vote for several elections. Dwight D. Eisenhower got 39 percent in 1956, and Richard Nixon got 32 percent in his narrow loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960.

But then President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 (outlawing segregation in public places) and his eventual Republican opponent, Sen. Barry Goldwater, opposed it. Johnson got 94 percent of the black vote that year, still a record for any presidential election.
The following year Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. No Republican presidential candidate has gotten more than 15 percent of the black vote since.

So blacks haven't always voted Democrat as a whole. We vote with the party who we feel our concerns and social agenda is heard and addressed. Let me also say that I feel that in this day and age the Democratic party takes advantage of the black vote, I also believe that the Democratic party likes to pacify the black voters to keep us supporting them. providing us with free this and free that and it creates a dependancy. Don't get me wrong I support many federal social programs for the poor. I work for one, but I believe as my program is designed to move people up and out of poverty to make them self-reliant.

However to my Right-Winged, Conservative, Tea-party, Patriotic, Red-blooded. This message is for you.

During slavery the unemployment rate for blacks was at 100%. Before FDR's "New Deal" The black unemployment rate was double that of their white counterparts. But it wasn't until unemployment hit over 20% for white Americans that the welfare program was created, and even then, blacks only recieved 10% of the benefits. So stop showing black faces when referring to American welfare recipients. If welfare was created for blacks in the 1930's, it wouldn't have been created at all ~ That is all

Bositis, David A. "Blacks and the 2004 Democratic National Convention." Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Table 1, Presidential vote and party identification of black Americans, 1936–2000; p. 9.
Bositis, David A. "The Black Vote in 2004," Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 2005.
Apple Jr., R.W. "G.O.P. Tries Hard to Win Black Votes, but Recent History Works Against It." The New York Times, 19 Sept. 1996.
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"Welcome To The New Jim Crow " The Mass Incarceration of African-American Men

If you approach any person on the street who has even the most limited knowledge about the African-American experience here in a America, and ask them have blacks made progress in the political, social, educational & economic realm of our society. You will probably get a resounding YES! Blacks, Whites, Arabs, Asians & Hispanics would agree with this. Most likely the percentage of the affirmitive would vary among each ethnic group, with the highest % of those who agree being white and the lowest being among blacks.

How can someone disagree? Just look at all the black people who have broken the chains of social opression to make into the upper echelon of the American Dream and have established the print of black american normalcy. We have, Oprah Winfery, Jay-Z, Bob Johnson, Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan & of course our 44th President of The United States Barack Hussein Obama. This list goes on & on. But of course (insert sarcastisc voice here) all of these successful black people recieved there riches by  belonging to secret satanic societies, such as the Illuminati, The Boule & The Freemasons. By the way shout out to my bruhs the Prince Hall Free & Accepted Masons, members of King David Lodge # 20 of Muskegon MI. Travel light Bruhs.  

With all of that being said, there is no way we can deny the progress we've made. I for one, will not & cannot deny advancements by our people. But you must understand that the progress of a people is not determined by how many wealthy individuals they have produced over time. It's determined by the seismic shift of advancement the group has made over all. I want you to take a look at some alarming facts about the incarceration of the black men in our country. According to Michelle Alexander author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". 


* There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

* As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

* If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing undercaste -- not class, caste -- a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits -- much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.

I attribute "The War on Drugs" as the catalyst of this phenomenon. The so called war on drugs which is a war thats been wage pretty much exculsively on poor communities & predominately on people of color. It has given our country ways to legally deny black men the right to vote, automatically excluded them from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits.

Naysayers will try and attribute these facts by insisting that it is the rising crime rates in the black community that has made these numbers possible. However, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth. The issue is that black men are incarcerated at such a higher rate for the same exact crime that his white counterparts recieve probabations & slaps on the wrist for.

So while we in the right hand imprison black men at least 5 times before the age of  25 for the same crimes white men are giving a pass on. Then upon release, place them into a caste system where there is virtually no way for them to advance in a already weak economy, predjudice workforce, automatic denial of finacial aid for college & public benefits because of his criminal past. Then in the left hand, we deny predominately black families more benefits if he resides in the home with his kids & their mother, so she keeps him out the home to keep higher food stamps & TANF benefits, provide her with housing benefits, educational opportunities, employment opportunities which then  creates a self-delusional idea of a "independent woman" which unfortunately leads to a divide in the black family because he can't provide and she thinks she doing both jobs as parents. She remaims pacified & he remains classified. and none of us advances.

So while we were crowning President Clinton as the 1st Black President (Pre-Obama) because he played a saxaphone, smoked weed & recieved fallatio in the oval office from an intern we weren't looking at the fact that he alone could have overriden the congressional vote to pass this mandatory minimum, but he declined to do so, and the 100:1 ratio persist to this day....Part 2 of this will focus on Prisons them self and the inhumane treatment. Is it a place for punishment, rehabilition or both...Until next time.....Peace