Alfonzo Rachel wonders why blacks are so loyal to democrats

Hey Tex, could you post the link to that first video? All I can see is the script and no video. Thanks.

dblboggie wrote:Hey Tex, could you post the link to that first video? All I can see is the script and no video. Thanks.

Looks fine on my end. Must be the phone. But here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xryXpK042pQ

I don't think it's the phone, I can see other embedded videos here... but thanks for the link.

Unfortunately, it stops playing about 6 minutes in, but what I've seen of it is spot on. This really has it going on!

You were right to make this a sticky! I too want to hear a response from those on the left!

TexasBlue wrote:Quite contrary to what Sharpton and most liberals think, a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported this Civil Rights Act.

The split in the vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was regional, not partisan:

The original House version:
Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7–93%)
Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0–100%)
Northern Democrats: 145–9 (94–6%)
Northern Republicans: 138–24 (85–15%)

The Senate version:
Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5–95%)
Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0–100%)
Northern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%)
Northern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%)

Tell me, what do you see here? What is a stronger predictor of whether a given Congressman voted for or against the Act: region, or political party?

Notice how outside the South, a higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans voted for the act, and a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted against it. Notice as well that inside the South, a higher percentage of Republicans (100%!) voted against the act.

This is not trivial. There were functionally two "Democratic" parties in the buildup to 1964: the racist Southern Democrats (who were literally a separate party, the "Dixiecrats," in 1948), and all the other non-Southern Democrats, who overwhelmingly supported civil rights (more strongly than Republicans did!), and who produced three presidents--Truman, Kennedy and Johnson--who all supported civil rights. These two factions were essentially at war over the direction the party was to take. The Yankees won that war. Support for civil rights became the Democratic platform; the Dixiecrats withered away into irrelevance, and their constituents began voting Republican. (Lately, I have been exploring the reason for this. I don't want to get into this shift in southern white voting preferences until I fully understand it).

So, the statement I quoted is technically true, as far as it goes, but it only tells half the story. The other half, well...it tends to undercut the point that the statement is intended to make.

Finally: let's not forget that the '64 and '65 Acts were signed into law by a Democratic president, who ran against a Republican challenger who opposed the '64 Act.

Now, Goldwater was no racist. I'm not saying that. I know he opposed the Act on Constitutional grounds, and supported previous civil rights legislation. But the fact is that he, a Republican presidential nominee, opposed this landmark piece of legislation, that is now seen as such a fundamentally right law, that Johnson signed. I suspect this difference was a significant factor in changing black perceptions of the two parties.

And no, I haven't watched the video yet. I will.

OK, I watched the video. It took forever to buffer, so you guys better appreciate this. I'll try to keep this really short.

Much of the history he talks about, while important to know about, is no longer operative or relevant. It does not follow, from the observation that the Democrats WERE the party of slavery, that they ARE the party of slavery. Things change. This is a pretty elementary fact of life. Do I need to point this out?

He lies about the term "Dixiecrat" being made up by people who want to "rewrite history," and about the Civil Rights Acts passing without much support from Democrats. These are lies. I don't know how else to characterize those statements.

I might have missed it, but I don't think he acknowledged at all that the Civil Rights Acts were signed into law by a Democrat. And not a word about Goldwater.

He sure seems comfortable engaging in wild, baseless speculation.

And while he did make me chuckle a few times, I thought his manner was condescending. It seemed to me that he was addressing a black target audience...as though they were children.

There are a million little points he made, and I was originally going to address a whole lot of them, but it makes for a scattered, rambling post. This is the 'big picture' of my response.

TexasBlue wrote:Stickied because I won't allow this to go unanswered in the future.

Done.

I totally forgot about replying to your other post on this very subject. It was after 5AM and I don't think good at that time of the morning.

My whole point of view on this subject is how the Democrats point to the Republicans as racists and that they were the ones that didn't want blacks to have the same rights as whites do. It's all bullshit. One can point out to what region that the party is from and it doesn't matter on a large scale. Democrats of yesteryear were for slavery. That's it in a nutshell. The term 'racist' lost its power a long time ago. It's nothing more than a generic pejorative which is used to refer to anything and everything that the left doesn't like. The only people who take the term literally anymore are far-left 1960s liberals and paranoid blacks who take pleasure from believing racism is an all-encompassing reality. It's an easy excuse for their own failures.

I really get sick and tired of reading charges of racism these days. It's always been around but it's increase ten-fold since Obama was sworn in. It gets old. It's really sad when an intelligent person can hold those beliefs. If Obama was a strong fiscal conservative (as a Democrat) there would be no Tea Party. If Obama was a Republican, nearly every single Republican would be a strong supporter of his and the Democrats would be tearing into him like you have never seen before.

There's also a hypocrisy here. Where he is forced to acknowledge the Democrats' accomplishments in civil rights, he portrays it cynically: 'they were interested in votes, nothing more. This is their strategy: to keep them down, then throw them crumbs (CRAs 64 and 64 were 'crumbs??') to make them grateful.' Whereas, say, Eisenhower's civil rights accomplishments were motivated by nothing other than the purest, most altruistic moral goodness. Hypocrite. BTW, Eisenhower would be tarred as a "RINO" in this modern age.

EDIT: you posted while I was writing this. I'm not ignoring you; will respond later.

I'll take a black man's word at this more than a white liberal.

TexasBlue wrote:I'll take a black man's word at this more than a white liberal.

I really hope you aren't trying dismiss everything I just wrote on the basis that I'm white and your guy is black.

Because if you are, all your complaining about "playing the race card" is going to be so fucking hilarious.

Seriously. What does that even mean, what you just wrote?

You and Dbl demanded that "those on the left" respond.

I honestly wouldn't have bothered if I knew the game was rigged from the start: that my comments would be dismissed out of hand because the black guy's video automatically trumps the white guy's post.

kronos wrote:I really hope you aren't trying dismiss everything I just wrote on the basis that I'm white and your guy is black.

Because if you are, all your complaining about "playing the race card" is going to be so fucking hilarious.

Seriously. What does that even mean, what you just wrote?

Somewhat. Not entirely. The passage of the act was indeed a good thing. But what has it accomplished for the black community? Other than not being regarded as 2nd class citizens?

I'll just be blunt here.

TexasBlue wrote:I'll take a black man's word at this more than a white liberal.

How is this not a racist argument?

Imagine if the tables were turned. A liberal posts a video of a black guy rambling on for 18 minutes about liberal talking points. You watch the whole video. You write out a thoughtful response. It takes you some time. Your opponent says: "I'll take a black man's word at this more than a white conservative." He dismisses your entire post because of the color of your skin, and because of the skin color of the guy in the video. I'm sure you'd say that was a racist argument. You'd be right to.

How is this any different?

And just so we're perfectly clear one on thing, so this doesn't get ugly: I am not calling you a racist. I do not think you are a racist. I DO think the logic you are employing here is racist. Doesn't mean you, personally, are. I am not attacking you. I am attacking your argument. So don't defend yourself. Defend your post, which says that a person's skin color determines the worth of a man's "word."

If a man who is slandered or criticized because of the color of his skin, I think his word holds more weight than not. People who have been pushed around for a couple centuries because of the color of their skin, I think their word holds weight.

I'm trying to get this out there and it's not coming out in how I'm thinking it.

That makes absolutely no sense. Who has slandered or criticized Alfonzo Rachel because of the color of his skin? Not me. I did say he was a liar and a hypocrite, which is a criticism, sure, but which has nothing to do with the color of his skin. I didn't say those things because he's black. I said it because he made untrue statements, and has a double standard in the way he views the civil rights accomplishments of the two parties.

I have no idea whether he's ever been pushed around because of the color of his skin (do you?), but if he has, it doesn't automatically make him right about everything. Have you even watched the video? Recently? Do you know what he actually talks about? I'll tell you: He talks about history. A black man does not automatically know more about history because he is black. A lie about history does not suddenly become true because a black man said it.

Do you realize by your logic, anything Obama or Eric Holder or any black person ever says about race automatically trumps anything a whitey like you or Dbl could ever say?

So, can I just post Youtube videos of blacks rambling about liberal talking points now, and it automatically wins any debate because they're black?

What if I post a video of a black liberal here? Whose word trumps whose then? Is it only then that we can judge arguments on their actual merit?

What I'm trying to say is that when a black man says that injustices have been inflicted upon them for centuries or decades or whatever.... do you believe him? Is he full of shit? Or is he just someone who is playing on emotions?

The point of this thread is the injustices towards blacks via the Democrat Party. Why are blacks so emboldened by the Democrats? Why is that everything that the blacks stand for is countered by the policies of the Dems? Most blacks are conservative in nature, yet keep voting en masse for that party.

Yes, I watched the vid back on the very evening that I posted it.

TexasBlue wrote:What I'm trying to say is that when a black man says that injustices have been inflicted upon them for centuries or decades or whatever.... do you believe him? Is he full of shit? Or is he just someone who is playing on emotions?

Of course he's not lying about that. When I say he's lying, those are not the statements I'm referring to. I already pointed out the specific statements that were lies. I never said he was lying about the fact that horrible things were done to blacks. He is right that the Dems did horrible things to blacks in the distant past. But it is not the fact that he is black that makes him right about this.

And note that when you first said you'd believe a black man's word over a white's, I had never stated that horrible things were not done to blacks. So if that really is what you meant, then you're addressing things I never said.

TexasBlue wrote:The point of this thread is the injustices towards blacks via the Democrat Party.

Nor did I ever deny any injustices towards the black via the Democratic Party. You're not hearing me here. I never denied that the Democrats were racist sons of bitches for much of their existence. However, as you said in the other thread, "what was and what is." It is stupid to pretend that change never happens. It would be stupid for a black in 2012 to vote Republican because of what the Democrats did in the 1800s, or because Lincoln freed the slaves. It's not 1860 anymore. It's not 1948. It's not 1964. Things change. To pretend that they don't is stupid and dishonest.

And as I keep trying to hammer home, it is dishonest to paint "the Democrats" as a whole as enemies of civil rights, when it was only the moribund Southern wing that did this, and excluding them, the Democrats were stronger supporters of civil rights than the Republicans.

TexasBlue wrote:Why are blacks so emboldened by the Democrats? Why is that everything that the blacks stand for is countered by the policies of the Dems? Most blacks are conservative in nature, yet keep voting en masse for that party.

You seem to be talking about social issues like gay marriage here, which were never addressed in the video. This is not a bad point, actually. But note that not all Dems are socially liberal. Perhaps many blacks lean conservative on social issues, but (like you) view social issues as relatively unimportant.

I don't claim to fully understand why blacks tend to vote Dem, but I explained part of the reason: the 1964 election, generally considered by historians to be "realigning." I think since then, the Democrats have actively chased after the black vote, while the Republicans have written them off, putting most of their eggs in the white Southerner basket. You've heard of the Southern Strategy?

TexasBlue wrote:Yes, I watched the vid back on the very evening that I posted it.

Then you know that everything he talks about is stuff you can look up in a book or on the internet to see whether it's true or false, and that his skin color has nothing to do with whether those statements are true or false.

kronos wrote:And as I keep trying to hammer home, it is dishonest to paint "the Democrats" as a whole as enemies of civil rights, when it was only the moribund Southern wing that did this, and excluding them, the Democrats were stronger supporters of civil rights than the Republicans.


I don't claim to fully understand why blacks tend to vote Dem, but I explained part of the reason: the 1964 election, generally considered by historians to be "realigning." I think since then, the Democrats have actively chased after the black vote, while the Republicans have written them off, putting most of their eggs in the white Southerner basket. You've heard of the Southern Strategy?

Whether they were southern Dems or not back in the day is irrelevant to me. It was the party that they belonged to. If it was such an issue back then, the northern Dems would've shunned them entirely but didn't.

I understand completely why they vote Dem. It's, imo, because they're promised the world by the Dems and as the Dems can't ever deliver, they blame the GOP in its stead. It's bullshit.

If you want to grasp history inaccurately, incompletely, simplistically...I can't stop you. So, that's fine; go ahead. Focus on party. Ignore region. Even though, as I've shown, region had way more to do with it.

kronos wrote:If you want to grasp history inaccurately, incompletely, simplistically...I can't stop you. So, that's fine; go ahead. Focus on party. Ignore region. Even though, as I've shown, region had way more to do with it.

Of course region had a lot to do with it. But was it called the Southern Democrat Party back then? No. Dividing the country into two to make a point doesn't cut it. I understand where you're coming from though. Don't get me wrong on that.

Of course it doesn't cut it for you. I don't expect to convince you of anything here. You've got a lot vested in your position, and I don't expect to shift it an iota. I'm just putting these arguments out there for the record. Anyone reading this thread can judge for themselves who's making more sense.

You're the one splitting the country in two. I'm splitting it into four. You're only focusing on one variable: political party. I'm focusing on that plus a second variable: region. You ignore region, even though it is far more relevant, far more tightly correlated with the split in the civil rights vote, than political party. There is a pattern here, and it follows regional lines, not partisan lines. You are choosing to ignore the very obvious pattern and focus on a pattern that simply does not exist, because the real pattern that jumps right out at anyone looking this objectively, does not score you political points.

You seem very hung up on the name of the Democratic Party. You seem to think the Northern Dems should've called themselves something different, and the fact that they didn't somehow cancels out their actual concrete achievements in civil rights. Who cares what they called themselves? Focus on what they did.

TexasBlue wrote:I understand completely why they vote Dem. It's, imo, because they're promised the world by the Dems and as the Dems can't ever deliver, they blame the GOP in its stead. It's bullshit.

Ah, it's all so simple, isn't it? The Democrats simply say bad things about the Republicans, and blacks just believe them, and that is why blacks tend to vote Democrat. Even though the Republicans say bad things about the Democrats too, which blacks evidently don't believe. Since both sides are flinging shit at each other, why do blacks believe the Democrats and not the Republicans?

Again, I suggest to you that black disaffectation with the GOP has a lot to do with the Southern Strategy:

Kevin Phillips wrote:From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that...but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

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Lee Atwater wrote:''You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

''And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me -- because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'''

Link

Ken Mehlman wrote:''Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization," he added. ''I am here as Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

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Michael Steele wrote:For the last 40-plus years we had a 'Southern Strategy' that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, 'Bubba' went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.

Link

^Straight from the horse's mouth. The GOP committed political suicide nominating a man who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (The Democratic president he ran against signed it into law--something Republicans never acknowledge, even though if a Republican had signed it they'd be crowing about it till the end of days.) They decided to cut their losses, write the black vote off, and focus on winning the white southern vote, pitching their message to that audience, and yes, pandering to racism on occasion, sometimes with plausible deniability. None of this helped undo the damage Goldwater did in '64.