asoldier4justice's Blog

I posted a bulletin go ahead say your piece...

I write this blog to ask the question, what are we doing to insure that we will not return to that which we struggled and lost lives for; a profound escape of hate, evil and massive suffrage endured by the African-American race. I say this in conclusion; if we dont do something about our current status, we wont have a status at all.

Since the 1930s most urban areas have leaned Democratic. But in presidential elections, many remained stubbornly competitive between the two parties. As late as 1988, for example, Republican nominees won Dallas County and made strong showings in the core urban counties of Cook (Chicago), Los Angeles and King (Seattle).

Today, Americas urban areas have evolved into a political monoculture that increasingly resembles the South that provided a base for Democrats from the late 19th century to the 1960s. This fall, Barack Obama, a resident of Chicago, can comfortably expect to triumph in virtually every major urban county, often by ratios of 2-to-1 or more. He can count just as much on cities in decline as he can on those that have been gentrified; he will rack up big margins both in heavily white core counties such as those around Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., as well as overwhelmingly minority Baltimore, Philadelphia and the Bronx. Race and income levels do not explain the emerging urban monoculture, because the cause lies elsewhere: in the evolution of cities over the past four decades. The shift began in the late 1960s, when urban regions, from financial centers such as New York and Chicago to old industrial cities such as Detroit and Cleveland, began to suffer a massive exodus of predominantly white, middle-class residents.

This left behind an increasingly impoverished, highly minority population with very little proclivity to support conservative or even moderate Republicans. More recently, some cities - such as New York, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco - have attracted a population of well-educated, white professionals. Many new urbanites tend to be students or professionals enjoying city life during their first, highly experimental years of adulthood. At this point, they are most open to liberal ideas and causes; they have yet to worry much about taxes and crime, issues that drive people to the center.

This may be bitter in the mouth and sweet in the stomach of many. It is very rare; in fact, it is taboo for African-Americans to question their loyalty to the Democratic Party within their communities. Where are the political planks that deal specifically with the African-American agenda? Black on Black crime, fair housing, jobs in the inner city, failing public schools (voucher initiatives), teen pregnancy, Affirmative Action, etc. Forgive me, they do dedicate 5 sentences to their ongoing commitment to Civil Rights typical of the dems, keep the African-Americans looking at issues that are not at the forefront of what is progressive for the lifting of the masses of their people. The dems are more concerned with courting the Latino vote and are invested in getting immigration reforms passed to give citizenship to an estimated 10 - 20 million illegal immigrants. Don't get it twisted by the term undocumented worker they are illegal immigrants. African-Americans no longer carry the favored minority label placed on them by the Democratic Party that belongs to the Latino community.

But don't blame the dems, African-Americans vote each year at a rate of 90% (or better) for democrats running for office. With this kind of blind loyalty, you are asking to be taken for granted and that is what has happened. African-Americans would be wise to leverage this voting block in order to force the Democratic and Republican Parties to listen to their concerns and act on their behalf. Since this isn't happening, the Republicans completely ignore African-Americans because they know they will not get their vote and the Democrats take them for granted because they know they already have their vote. African-American leadership is complicit in this failure to have an agenda heard by both political systems and needs to change those in charge and set off in a new and progressive direction.

The Great Migration was the movement of approximately seven million African Americans out of the Southern United States to the North, Midwest and West from 1910 to 1970. African Americans migrated to escape racism, seek employment opportunities in industrial cities, and to get better education for their children, all of which were widely perceived as leading to a better life. 1965-1970, 14 states of the South, especially Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, contributed to a large net migration of blacks to the other three Census designated regions of the United States. Originally, civil rights programs were enacted to help African Americans become full citizens of the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution made slavery illegal; the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law; the Fifteenth Amendment forbids racial discrimination in access to voting. The 1866 Civil Rights Act guarantees every citizen "the same right to make and enforce contracts ... as is enjoyed by white citizens ... In 1896, the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld a "separate, but equal" doctrine that proved to be anything but equal for African Americans.

The decision marked the end of the post-Civil War reconstruction era as Jim Crow laws spread across the South. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 which outlawed segregationist hiring policies by defense-related industries which held federal contracts. Roosevelt's signing of this order was a direct result of efforts by Black trade union leader, A. Philip Randolph. The actual phrase "affirmative action" was first used in President John F. Kennedy's 1961 Executive Order 10925 which requires federal contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." The same language was later used in Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Executive Order 11246. Other equal protection laws passed to make discrimination illegal were the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title II and VII of which forbid racial discrimination in "public accommodations" and race and sex discrimination in employment, respectively; and the 1965 Voting Rights Act adopted after Congress found "that racial discrimination in voting was an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of the country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution."

Much of the opposition to affirmative action is framed on the grounds of so-called "reverse discrimination and unwarranted preferences." In fact, less than 2 percent of the 91,000 employment discrimination cases pending before the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission are reverse discrimination cases. Under the law as written in Executive Orders and interpreted by the courts, anyone benefiting from affirmative action must have relevant and valid job or educational qualifications. After experiencing historic labor market gains during the late 1990s, African Americans represented a greater share of the long-term jobless in this economic cycle. Long-term unemployment is expanding beyond blue collar workers: higher levels of education and white collar jobs are no longer providing insulation against severe joblessness.

Hello BP family: While researching, I stumbled upon this article and thought I should share this with you. Please feel free to comment, this should make for an interesting conversation. I tend to believe it has nothing to do with party. It will be interesting this election and in hopes for our first African-American president. But is he with the wrong party, does party affiliation matter when it comes to African-Americans and most important are the facts below true and if so, are the Democrats responsible for suffrage of African-American communities? If Obama serves his purpose will they change his nationality and say it's the white in him?

Dear Democrats An Open Letter to the Democratic Party By Lt. Colonel Frances Rice, U.S. Army Retired "We, African American citizens of the United States, declare and assert:

Whereas in the early 1600's 20 African men and women were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship as slaves and from that tiny seed grew the poisoned fruit of plantation slavery which shaped the course of American development,

Whereas reconciliation and healing always begin with an apology and an effort to repay those who have been wronged,

Whereas the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices committed against African Americans during the past two hundred years, nor for the residual impact that those atrocities and practices and current soft bigotry of low expectations are having on us today,

Whereas the Democratic Party fought to expand slavery and, after the Civil War, established Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes and other repressive legislation that were designed to disenfranchise African Americans,

Whereas the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, and their primary goal was to intimidate and terrorize African American voters, Republicans who moved south to protect African Americans and any other whites who supported them,

Whereas, according to leading historians (both black and white), the horrific atrocities committed against African Americans during slavery and Reconstruction were financed, sponsored, and promoted by the Democratic Party and their Ku Klux Klan supporters,

Whereas from 1870 to 1930, in an effort to deny African Americans their civil rights and to keep African Americans from voting Republican, thousands of African Americans were shot, beaten, lynched, mutilated, and burned to death by Ku Klux Klan terrorists from the Democratic Party,

Whereas Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission,

Whereas the Democratic party has used racist demagoguery to deceive African Americans about the history of the Republican Party that:

(a) started as the anti-slavery party in 1854, (b) fought to free African Americans from slavery, (c) designed Reconstruction, a ten-year period of unprecedented political power for African Americans, (d) passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution granting African Americans freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote, (e) passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 granting African Americans protection from the Black Codes and prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, (f) passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 granting African Americans protection from the Jim Crow laws, (g) established Affirmative Action programs to help African Americans proper with Republican President Richard Nixon's 1969 Philadelphia Plan that set the first goals and timetables and his 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act that made Affirmative Action Programs the law of our nation, and (h) never sponsored or launched a program, passed laws, or engaged in practices that resulted in the death of millions of African Americans,

Whereas Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka (a 1954 decision by Chief Justice Earl Warren who was appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower) was a landmark civil rights case that was designed to overturn the racist practices that were established by the Democratic Party,

Whereas after Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt received the vote of African Americans, he banned African American newspapers from the military shortly after taking office because he was convinced the newspapers were communists,

Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Law, opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was later criticized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for ignoring civil rights issues.

Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy authorized the FBI (supervised by his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy) to investigate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on suspicion of being a communist,

Whereas Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, made a 14-hour filibuster speech in the Senate in June 1964 in an unsuccessful effort to block passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and was heralded in April 2004 by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd as a senator who would have been a great leader during the Civil War,

Whereas when the 1964 Civil Rights Act came up for vote, Senator Al Gore, Sr. and the rest of the Southern Democrats voted against the bill,

Whereas in the House of Representatives only 61 percent of the Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act as compared to 80 percent of Republicans, and in the Senate only 69 percent of the Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, compared to 82 percent of the Republicans,

Whereas Democratic President Bill Clinton sent troops to Europe to protect the citizens of Bosnia and Kosovo while allowing an estimated 800,000 black Rwandans to be massacred in Africa, vetoed the welfare reform law twice before signing it, and refused to comply with a court order to have shipping companies develop an Affirmative Action Plan,

Whereas Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore created harmful racial division when he falsely claimed that the 2000 presidential election was "stolen" from him and that African Americans in Florida were disenfranchised, even though a second recount of Florida votes by the "Miami Herald" and a consortium of major news organizations confirmed that he lost the election, and a ruling by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declared that African Americans were not denied the right to vote,

Whereas the Democratic Party's soft bigotry of low expectations and social promotions have consigned African Americans to economic bondage and created a culture of dependency on government social programs,

Whereas the Democratic Party's use of deception and fear to block welfare reform, the faith-based initiative and school choice that would help African Americans prosper 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 whose racist legacy bode ill until this generation of African Americans,

Now, therefore, for the above and other documented atrocities and accumulated wrongs inflicted upon African Americans, we demand a formal written apology and other appropriate remuneration from the leadership of the Democratic Party.

And please if you have an opinion please back it up with facts. If you can't read it and sign it, than don't say it.

Here's the link: http://www.lindasog.com/archiv es/2008/03/dear_democrats.html