Y'all Don't Give Us A Reason To Vote FOR Conservafools

The more conservatives open their mouths, the more they prove just how politically savvy African Americans are, why we reject conservatism and why we vote at 90% clips for Democrats.

We've had this ongoing debate for years in the African-American community about whether or not we should be diversifying our political power and spreading it in both parties as opposed to the current situation of it being concentrated in the Democratic Party.  While in theory that's a sound strategy for us to have people involved in both parties, reality says otherwise.

There are 38.9 million of us making up 13% of the American population spread out across the country and concentrated in many high value electoral college states like California, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Florida and New York.  As Dr. King presciently foresaw, the Black vote is often the deciding vote in many elections

Since the 1956 election, in which we liked Ike just like everybody else in the country and President Dwight Eisenhower got 39% of the African American vote in his reelection bid and Vice President Richard Nixon got 32% of our votes four years later, the Republican share of the African-American vote cratered to just 6% in the LBJ landslide in 1964.

Since that election the GOP percentage of the African American vote has stayed below 15% except in 2004, when GW Bush surprisingly got 16% of the African American vote.       

And why has that share of the African American vote dropped to those levels?

The passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and the appointment and confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court combined with a four decade long commitment since 1964 by the Democrats to passing civil rights legislation.  Democrats enacting or protecting policies favorable to our community, appointing Blacks to federal judgeships, ambassadorships, government posts and cabinet positions allowed us to compare and contrast the policies of liberal Democrats versus conservative Republicans.

Meanwhile we witnessed the Dixiecrats fleeing the Democratic Party for the Republicans with the corresponding ratcheted up engagement by the GOP in anti-Black policies.  The embrace of the 'Southern Strategy' and anti Black voter suppression tactics.  The rise of conservative pundits, politicians and Fox News who demonize the African American community ad nauseum.

We also noted the conservative trickle down economic policies implemented by the Reagan and George HW Bush administrations in the 80's-early 90's didn't help our community and only benefited the wealthy at our expense combined with their increasing far right wing anti-education, xenophobic and racist policies leading us to say thanks but no thanks to voting for them.

And when you have a Black* Supreme Court justice nominated by a conservative president who is the antithesis of the great Justice Thurgood Marshall and knee-grows in the Republican Party mouthing the same racist talking points and bigoted rhetoric that we hear coming out of the mouths of conservative white people, why should any proud, politically savvy Black person give up their precious vote for a party and a political philosophy that wants to oppress them?