Growing up as an African American in a low-income neighborhood and middle class family has historically implied you are a future member of the Democratic Party. For example, I spent most of my days as a child listening to widespread support for candidates such as Michael Dukakis and at every family celebration I still hear cries for the return of the Clinton Era. We are entering a new era and a growing number of African American voters’ desire conservative government. For the past several decades, the African American culture has been blinded by class warfare, enticed to believe in a liberal ideology that supports redistribution of wealth and widespread addiction to entitlements. The fundamental cracks in the governmental process and the need for good conservative leadership is greater now than when Reagan rescued our Country over 20 years ago from death gripping inflation, taxes, and broken government.
Have we forgotten?
The majority of African Americans in our country carry a belief that Conservatives have never done anything for African Americans, but a quick peek at history will suggest differently. The founder of the Republican Party is Abraham Lincoln and he was the liberator of African American slaves in the 19th century and one of the first promoters of civil rights. During the critical fight for our “full” civil rights in the 20th century our African American leaders were met head on by terrorist groups such as the KKK. It seems most African Americans have forgotten this group was born out of the Democratic Party in the 19th century after the civil war. Members of the Democratic Party used the “clan” to terrorize and fix elections in the South. The KKK became one of the largest persecutors of African Americans with a membership base of several million and broad political support at local, state, and national levels.
In fact, most African Americans born after 1970 have a firm belief that African Americans have “always” solely been members of the Democratic Party. Of course, this is incorrect and the record shows African Americans were predominantly Republican until the Great Depression when they jumped party lines to elect Roosevelt because of the promised “New Deal” and economic relief from the depression. Those reforms and the subsequent expansion of the federal government did not pull the economy out of the depression. Government spending on World War II revived the national economy. Nevertheless, the African American vote was never attracted back to the Republican Party; afterwards, a new era of huge entitlement programs and government dependency was ushered in under the guise of schemes such as Social Security.
Conservative vs. Liberal
A large number of African Americans rely on government entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, but a growing number of middle class African Americans need to be educated on conservative principles. Redistribution of wealth does not result in any type of security for anyone. True social security can be obtained when you are allowed to retain your tax money and invest it in whatever strategy you design. Government programs will not provide us with security, but instead they create dependency and sense of entitlement among our citizens.
Our social security system is on life support as we have now discovered the method for funding social security will not be able to sustain the system. Our elected officials have done a poor job of managing our fiscal budget through robbing the Social Security Trust Fund to support “pork” spending and this makes the need for a fiscally conservative leader critical over the next eight years. Our current administration disappointed us all with their misdirected leadership, poor foreign policy, and out of control spending.
As new generations of African Americans begin to explore the business community and become entrepreneurs, they have something to gain from embracing the pro business principles of the Republican Party. Globalization is a buzzword, but its effects are very real and have connected members of the international community in new ways. The liberal ideology of protectionism will not create a vibrant economy that provides job opportunities for our citizens. This belief will only stifle economic growth, create domestic job losses, and negatively impact our citizens. Instead we should embrace the changes that come with globalization and support a government that provides training programs, which will educate our citizens on the skills needed to compete in our new knowledge based economy.
What’s Next?
Leaders of the Republican Party need to recognize this fundamental opportunity to pursue the African American vote and begin educating more African Americans about conservative principles. As more African Americans graduate from our nation’s universities; explore various industries and amass wealth, they will no longer have a desire to follow a liberal ideology that promotes class warfare and redistribution of wealth.
As new generations of African Americans come forward with full confidence in their own abilities to conquer the risks and challenges of life, there will be a greater demand for small government and conservative fiscal policy. African American voters deciding to vote in a liberal way need to understand the full effects of their vote. We have lost our passion for the political process and forgotten about the sacrifices of our ancestors, which gave us this treasured opportunity to have a voice. We need to be more deliberate about understanding the issues and where candidates stand on those issues and most importantly how these issues affect us daily. Maybe that means you vote for Obama or maybe that means you vote for Huckabee, but you do not vote for Hilary Clinton just because you have some nostalgia for Bill Clinton.
