Thursday, May 23, 2013

Introducing E.W. Jackson, The Republican Party's Newest "Black Folks are on a Plantation" Political Race Minstrel

The Republican Party has an obsession with black voters, slavery analogies, and plantations. As I have discussed many times, the Right's obsession with suggesting that black voters who choose to support the Democratic Party are slaves, and that Black Conservatives are "liberators" like Harriet Tubman is an abuse of a historical tragedy for cynical political ends.

Moreover, no other group would have their political agency and legacy so stigmatized and mocked.

To point. I have yet to hear the loyalty of Jewish-Americans to the Democratic Party caricaturized as something akin to people who would choose to stay in the death camps of Auschwitz or Treblinka.

Not surprisingly, the Republican Party uses black garbage pail kids black conservatives as the water carriers for this offensive message.

Virginia Lt. Governor candidate E.W. Jackson is the newest black Republican race minstrel to "double cork" as he shucks and jives in support of the symbolic racism which is the name brand of the Republican Party in the post civil rights era.

Charles Blow writing over at The NY Times calls out Jackson and the Republican Party's mess here:
Why do Republicans keep endorsing the most extreme and hyperbolic African-American voices — those intent on comparing blacks who support the Democratic candidates to slaves? That idea, which only a black person could invoke without being castigated for the flagrant racial overtones, is a trope to which an increasingly homogeneous Republican Party seems to subscribe. 
The most recent example of this is E.W. Jackson, who last weekend became the Virginia Republicans’ candidate for lieutenant governor in the state... 
The Democrat Plantation theology goes something like this: Democrats use the government to addict and incapacitate blacks by giving them free things — welfare, food stamps and the like. This renders blacks dependent on and beholden to that government and the Democratic Party.
This is not completely dissimilar from Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” comments, although he never mentioned race...
The Republican Party has apparently not made the great discovery that they will be unable to include more black and brown folks in their electoral coalition if their standing strategy is to insult voters by calling them drones, slaves, or political zombies with not a bit of sense to act rationally and in their own self-interest.

Blow concludes:
While these politicians accuse the vast majority of African-Americans of being mindless drones of the Democrats, they are skating dangerously close to — if not beyond — the point where they become conservative caricatures. 
The implication that most African-Americans can’t be discerning, that they can’t weigh the pros and cons of political parties and make informed decisions, that they are rendered servile in exchange for social services, is the highest level of insult. And black politicians are the ones Republicans are cheering on as they deliver it. 
Now who, exactly, is being used here?
In defense of the Republican Party, their base of white "working class" voters who continue to support a political movement whose policies harm them are not exactly fully rational political actors. Perhaps the Tea Party GOP's leadership has been lulled into complacency, their political thinking dulled given the lockstep support they enjoy from Red State white voters?

If black folks are stuck on a "plantation" then what is the equivalent analogy for white working class Republican voters?

7 comments:

Vic78 said...

Those black republicans you see on tv are hustling. There are so many black liberals out there that you have to be pretty creative if you're going to make serious paper. So, just like Andrew Sullivan they go for the big bucks. What makes things better for them is they get attacks from the other side. If you're on your game you can get yourself a show on Fox. Not much different from Bill O'Reilley or Anne Coulter.

Wavenstein said...

And they call our activist "race hustlers."

CNu said...

Quite correctly. Two sides of the same coin, the one commonly used for misdirection of the simple-minded and suggestible....,

Joyce M said...

Nixon's southern strategy has now backfired. The old democratic party was burdened with the Dixiecrats. Many of the signers of the Southern Manifesto became Republicans. I am old enough to remember the transition, so a black republican may want to check his history to see who switched parties, ie.. Strom Thurmond, Rick Perry and Ronald Reagan.

Anonymous said...

It's appropriate time to make a few plans for the future and it is time to be happy. I have learn this put up and if I may just I want to suggest you some fascinating things or suggestions. Maybe you can write next articles relating to this article. I desire to read even more issues approximately it!

Here is my weblog http://www.tedxyse.com

Stephen Kearse said...

Maybe the corresponding analogy for white working class Republican voters would be "stuck on the prairie?" Westward expansion during the 1800s was characterized by dreams of liberty and freedom, yet these homeowners were totally at the mercy of railroad expansion and its accompanying economic and social shifts.

E.C. 2 said...

Yeah, Joyce is so "unfair" to the conservatives, using those "facts".