BLACK ALLEGIANCE TO DEMOCRATS CONTENTS
Black allegiance to Democrats is puzzling to me. Historically, the relationship between African Americans and the two major political parties in the United States Is characterized by a switch in allegiance from Republicans to Democrats that occurred during the first 40 years of the twentieth century. Several factors contributed to this change in party affiliation and subsequent Black allegiance to Democrats. My question is, Is this allegiance still Justified?
Black Allegiance to Republicans from the Civil War to the 1940’s
After the Civil War, Reconstruction brought freedom, opportunity, education, the right to vote, and hold elected public office to freedmen, former slaves. In 1866, the Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act and took control of all Southern state governorships and legislatures, leading to the election of numerous African Americans to local, state, and national offices. Consequently, all of the First Blacks in Congress Were Republicans. African Americans were also installed in other non-elected positions of power throughout the South. Reconstruction resulted in the South’s first state-funded public-school systems, more equitable taxation, and laws against racial discrimination in public transportation and accommodations. Freedmen also bought farms, started businesses, and established many of the traditional Black universities that remain to this day. By 1870, three civil rights Amendments to the Constitution, championed by Republicans, were ratified to prevent the benefits of the 1866 Civil Rights Act from being overturned by future legislatures. Amendment XIII freed former slaves. Amendment XIV gave the rights of citizenship to all former slaves and all those born in the United States. Amendment XV ensured the right of former slaves to vote. Sadly, the punitive implementation of Radical Republican Reconstruction turned most southerners into White supremacists with the first KKK groups forming by 1867. Democrat anarchists and White supremacists were controlled under martial law and suppression by Yankee solders. Until the end of Reconstruction in the mid-1870’s, Southern state governments were controlled by Republicans including blacks, carpetbaggers,” and “scalawags.” Consequently, protected Freedmen prospered during and after Reconstruction despite subsequent, restrictive Jim Crow laws.
The 1876 Presidential election between Democrat Samuel B. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was one of the most contentious in US history. By midnight election day, Tilden lacked one electoral vote needed to win; and he was leading the popular vote by 250,000. However, Republicans refused to accept defeat, and accused Democrats of intimidating and bribing African American voters to prevent them from voting in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, the only remaining Republican states in the South. According to the article, Compromise of 1877, after it became clear that the outcome of the race hinged largely on disputed returns from those three southern states, a bipartisan congressional commission was set up to resolve the election issue. While the commission worked, a secret meeting between Republicans and moderate southern Democrats negotiated an agreement that gave Hayes the victory in exchange for withdrawal of all federal troops from the South. As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina became Democratic once again ending the Reconstruction era.
Consequently, the Democrat Party regained control of the US House of Representatives and Southern State governments. Between the mid-1870’s and the early twentieth century, rulings by the United States Supreme Court restricted or overturned many of the civil rights granted to freedmen by the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Reconstruction Act of 1867, and Constitutional Amendments XIII, XIV, and XV. The fallacy of the living constitution concept where the law evolves with social mores is clear in the Supreme Court decisions that reversed the original intent of Amendments XIII, XIV, and XV by upholding Jim Crow laws including the idea of segregated separate but equal facilities did not violate the Constitution. In many respects, African Americans, most of whom lived in the South, were abandoned by Republicans when they were once ” stripped of their voting rights. Despite this, many African Americans both North and South maintained commitments to the Republican Party.
Great Migration Changed the Black Population from Rural to Urban
The Great Migration, relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West, from about 1916 to 1970, was probably the most significant factor in the political party affiliation reversal by African Americans. In the decade between 1910 and 1920, the Black population of major Northern cities grew by large percentages, including 66% in New York City, 248% in Chicago, 500% Philadelphia, and 611% in Detroit. By 1970, when the Great Migration ended, its demographic impact was unmistakable. In 1900, 9 of 10 Black Americans lived in the South, and 3 of 4 Southern Black people lived on farms. In contrast. the South was home to only half of the country’s African Americans, with only 20% living in the region’s rural areas in1970. This migration created a Black urban culture that would exert enormous influence for decades including eventual Black allegiance to Democrats.
Two factors were the primary causes of the great Migration. First, the outlawed KKK and White supremacists continued underground activities using acts of intimidation and violence including lynching Blacks to enforce Jim Crow Laws throughout the South. Second, a shortage of laborers became acute in Northern industrial centers, as WWI put an end to European immigration to the United States. Although the Great Depression slowed the migration, labor shortages resumed during WWII. During the periods of active migration, recruiters pursued African Americans with promises of good jobs and a better life in the industrial cities of the North, Midwest, and West. This activity offended many southern while supremacists.
Black residents ended up creating their own cities within big cities, fostering the growth of a new urban, African American culture. One of the most prominent examples was Harlem in New York City, a formerly all-White neighborhood that by the 1920s housed about 200,000 African Americans. Harlem became an important part of the artistic movement known first as the New Negro Movement and later as the Harlem Renaissance, which would have an enormous impact on the culture of the era. The History of African Americans in Detroit article reports that between1910 and 1930, the Black population of Detroit increased during the great migration from under 6,000 to over 120,000, a city within a city, and Detroit became the fourth largest city in the country. As in other cities, Black people were recruited for work in Detroit industries during WWI and WWII. Culturally, the African American community fostered the development of the Motown Record Corporation in 1960, according to Motown. From 1961 to 1971, Motown had 110 top 10 hits. Top artists included the Supremes with Diana Ross, the Four Tops, the Jackson 5. Related record label hit artists included Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Marvelettes, the Miracles, the Temptations, the Contours, Edwin Starr, Martha and the Vandellas, the Velvelettes, the Spinners, the Monitors, and Chris Clark. Smokey Robinson said of Motown’s cultural impact:
In the 1960’s, We were not only making music, we were making history. I recognized the bridges that we crossed, the racial problems and the barriers that we broke down with music. I would come to the South in the early days of Motown and the audiences would be segregated; and the kids were dancing together and holding hands.
The Greenwood District of Tulsa Oklahoma, with a population of 10,000, was another Black city within a city. Greenwood Avenue, known Black Wall Street, was the epicenter of this vibrant, affluent community.
After being disenfranchised in the South, urban African American centers provided the opportunity to begin a new era of increasing African American political activism as they found a new place for themselves in public life in the cities of the North, Midwest, and West. The civil rights movement directly benefited from this activism.
Unfortunately, the influx of African Americans to Northern, Midwestern, and Western cities caused animosity among Whites because they were competing for jobs and housing. The result was a rise of racial tension with White supremacist including KKK activity beginning in 1915. The summer of 1919 began the greatest period of interracial strife in U.S history including a disturbing wave of race riots in Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Illinois; Knoxville, Tennessee; Longview, Texas; Phillips County, Arkansas; and Omaha, Nebraska. The most serious was the 1919 Chicago Race Riot lasting13 days. A Black teenager was stoned by a group of White youths for being on an unofficially segregated beach and drowned in Lake Michigan. Police refusal to arrent the White perpetrator, identified by witnesses, started a week the rioting between gangs of Black and White Chicagoans. 15 White and 23 Black people were killed, 537 people injured, and 1,000 Black family’s homes were burned down.
Two years later, tensions between the races escalated as lynching increased in the Tulsa Oklahoma area. Armed Greenwood Blacks began to show up at courthouses to prevent White lynch mobs from killing Black people. When a young Black man was accused of sexually assaulting a young White girl, 75 armed Black men went to the courthouse to help the sheriff guard the accused. They were confronted by 1500 armed White men and retreated to Greenwood. This confrontation was followed by the Tulsa Race Massacre, which lasted over 18 hours from May 31 to June 1, 1921. On June 1, thousands of White anarchists poured into the Greenwood District, looting, and burning homes and businesses over an area of 35 city blocks. 1,256 houses were burned; 215 others were looted but not torched. Two newspapers, a school, a library, a hospital, churches, hotels, stores, and many other Black-owned businesses were among the buildings destroyed or damaged by fire. In 2001, the report of the Race Riot Commission concluded that between 100 and 300 Greenwood District Blacks were killed and more than 8,000 were made homeless over those 18 hours.
Unfortunately, after the Tulsa Race Massacre, the sheriff concluded no sexual assault had occurred; and he dropped all charges against the young Black man. The Tulsa Race Massacre remains one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history
The Black Conversion from Republican to Democrat
The Wikipedia articles, Democratic Party (United States) and History of the Republican Party (United States) both indicate that African Americans favored Republicans from the Civil War until 1936. In the article on Republicans, 
Paul Kleppner provides data showing that Northern Blacks
voted 60% Republican throughout the late nineteenth century. According to the article, When did Black Americans start voting so heavily Democratic?, the African American conversion from Republican to Democrat occurred between the 1936 and 1944 elections; and Black allegiance to Democrats became a consistent, dependable, political reality.
According to Black-American Members by Congress, all African Americans serving in the United States Congress from 1869 through 1935 were Republicans. Conversely, all the African Americans serving in the US Congress between 1935 and 1967 were Democrats. From 1935 to the present, most African Americans serving in the US Congress are members of the Democrat Party demonstrating solid Black allegiance to Democrats. From 1869 when the first African Americans served in the US Congress through the end of Reconstruction in1877, the number of African Americans serving gradually increased from three to eight in 1875. As soon as Reconstruction ended the trend reversed. In 1877, four African Americans served; and in 1879, there was only one serving. From 1879 until 1945, only one African American served in Congress in all but four congresses. Many congressional sessions during this period were devoid of African Americans. Three serving in a session of congress was the most occurring throughout this period. From 1879 through 1929, a few African Americans serving in Congress were from the South despite voter suppression and Jim Crow laws. From 1901 to 1929, no African Americans served in Congress; and between 1929 and 1967, there were no Republican African Americans in Congress. From 1967 to 1979, Senator Edward Brooke, III of Massachusetts, was the only Republican African American in the US Congress. In 1979, Republican Representative Melvin Evans of Vermont served a single term. From 1979 to 2009, all the Congressional African Americans were Democrats with the exceptions of 1995 when Republican Gary Franks from Connecticut and Independent Victor Frazer of Vermont who each served one term in the House and 1997 when Republican, Julius Watts, Jr. of Oklahoma started three terms in the US House. Watts was the only African American Republican in Congress from 1997 to 2003. Between 2003 and 2011, all African Americans in Congress were Democrats when South Carolina elected Republican Tim Scott to the House. In 2013, Tim Scott was elected to the US Senate. In 2015, African American Republican Mia Love of Utah, who served two terms until 2019, joined Scott in Congress. In 2017, Republican William Hurd of Texas, who served one term, joined Love in the House and Scott as the three African Americans Republicans in Congress. In the current congress, Senator Tim Scott is the only Republican African American serving. Clearly, this information demonstrates solid Black allegiance to Democrats.
Factors Affecting Black Conversion from Republican to Democrat
In their 2020 article, Why are Blacks Democrats?, Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird, discussed, what are to me, a perplexing set of circumstances resulting in Black allegiance to Democrats. African Americans are strong supporters of traditional values which is unique among most Democratic supporters; but, hey are not Republican. They note that since the 1960’s, the Black middle and upper classes have grown significantly while experiencing substantial diversification of more moderate racial, social, economic, and political views. In my opinion, this conservatism along with the strong traditional, Biblical Christian, values of a large segment of the greater Black Christian community, should result in renewed allegiance with Republicans. Nevertheless, Black allegiance to Democrats remains strong.
Democrat Support for Organized Labor
The Democrat Party was committed to organized labor. Black people moved out of the deep South to work in the factories of industrialized cities. Consequently, Democrat support for organized labor attracted African Americans to Democrats. African American participation in the early organizational phase of the labor movement brought exposure to the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). According to Communists in the United States labor movement (1937“1950) , the CPUSA also supported Civil Rights and creation of Fair Employment Practices Committees (FEPC) which promoted equal treatment of Black workers in unions with Black membership. In many UAW locals, White members engaged in hate strikes to protest hiring or promotion Black workers in their plants including the massive Detroit race riots in 1943. At the 1943 UAW Convention, delegates could not agree that the FEPC head should always be Black. The UAW resolved the issue by deciding that they would not take any stand on civil rights since it was outside the union’s economic sphere.
The CPUSA was active in organizing labor unions in the first half of the twentieth century. The CPUSA actively supported several service and small industry unions having significant African American membership. They helped organize most of the major unions of the country including the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), United Auto Workers (UAW), United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), now the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUEW), International Woodworkers of America (IWA), and the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU). From the mid-1930’s through WWII and the late 1940’s, the relationship between the CPUSA, union leadership, and our government was strained and at times, violent.
After the communist revolution in Russia, our nation distrusted communism. However, the CPUSA was a positive force for the labor movement which welcomed their contributions until power struggles within the various unions emerged. To assure the public that communists did not control the CIO, their 1940 conference resolved to condemn Communism, along with Nazism and fascism, as “inimical to the welfare of labor.” As the US military built up in 1940 and 1941 increased, US Secretary of War decided that labor strikes and slowdowns at key facilities were due to the CPUSA’s efforts to block Roosevelt’s military preparedness policy. Strikes at critical facilities were viewed as communist inspired for ideological reasons, rather than for better wages and working conditions. The most important of these strikes was at a bomber plant in June 1941 that built aircraft for the U. S. and Britain. The strike was so serious that the government seized the plant and army troops opened paths through the picket lines to allow workers to enter the plant. In 1946 the Republican Party took control of both the House and Senate. That Congress passed the Taft“Hartley Act, which contained a provision requiring all union officers to sign an affidavit that they were not Communists before the unions could bring a case before the National Labor Relations Board. The UAW expelled most CPUSA leaders who refused to sign the oath. By the early 1950’s, the CPUSA was insignificant in our labor movement.
The Great Depression
The Great Depression started in the United States with a stock market crash on Black Thursday, October 24, 1929. The result was a worldwide economic downturn that lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world. No group of people, including African Americans, escaped the ravages of the Great Depression. Industrial production in the United States declined 47 %, real gross domestic product fell 30 %, the wholesale price index declined 33 %, and at its highest point unemployment exceeded 20 %. Although the U.S. economy grew between 1933 and 1937, growth remained substantially below long-term trends. In 1937“1938, the U.S. suffered another severe downturn but recovered and grew rapidly by mid-1938. The country’s output finally returned to its long-run trend path in 1942.
During the Great Depression, Union membership increased due to severe unemployment and the passage of the 1935 National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act which encouraged collective bargaining and established unemployment compensation for laid-off workers. The role of the CPUSA during the start of organized labor exposed Americans, including African Americans to Marxism. Ultimately, the Great Depression taught people of all social classes the value of economic security and the need to endure and survive hard times. Americans rediscovered the virtues of democracy and the essential decency of the ordinary citizen. Thus, a decade marked by fundamental, even radical, social change ended for most with a reaffirmation of America’s cultural past and its traditional political ideals.
Roosevelt’s New Deal
The New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt,1 FDR’s, response to the Great Depression, appealed to African Americans. The New Deal benefited African Americans especially those who left the South for urban areas in other parts of the nation. The New Deal included government programs and agencies like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). They provided, jobs, unemployment, and welfare benefits for farmers, the unemployed, youth, the elderly, and African Americans. The New Deal produced a political realignment, between Democrats in the South and in big city machines, and newly empowered labor unions which included African American members, and other ethnic minorities. The realignment allowed Democrats to dominate presidential elections into the 1960s.
The Republicans were split. A minority supported the New Deal; but conservatives opposed the New Deal as hostile to business and economic growth. The majority of the Republicans in the U.S. Congress from 1937 to 1964 were conservatives. Some conservatives thought that the Roosevelt Administration supported communism, not traditional American values. Indeed, many conservatives believed then as now, that the left side of the political continuum is undergirded by Marxist philosophy which dominates their vision for the United States as patriots. Many conservatives believe that the policy initiatives of the New Deal and those of the Democrat Party from that period until today are based on Marxist philosophy. Hence, the fear of communism and its influences in the Roosevelt Administration.
The fact that New Deal policies supported the labor movement and its CPUSA participants contributed to conservative suspicions that the New Deal had its foundations in communism. By 1940, as the Roosevelt Administration prepared for the possibility of war, CPUSA union activities, promoting work slow-downs and strikes, became problematic. The Roosevelt Administration became critical of CPUSA union activities and slowly withdrew its support for CPUSA union activities. Although they had minor influence on policy, the fact that at least a dozen communists established a network of low-level government officials also contributed to conservative suspicions. The largest group worked in the Agriculture Adjustment Administration. They were all purged in 1935. Some moved to other government jobs. Other communists worked for the National Labor Relations Board, the National Youth Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Theater Project, and the Treasury and State Departments.
The fact that Roosevelt’s second Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, 1941-1945, was a progressive with a “naive faith in U.S.-Soviet cooperation,” who supported the work and ideas of Nicholas Rrich, a prominent Russian émigré, artist, and peace activist also contributed to conservative suspicions that the Roosevelt Administration was sympatric to communism. Additionally, in mid-1944, Wallace toured the Soviet Union labor camps in Magadan and Kolyma. Although the camps were forced labor camps for decadents, the Soviets claimed the workers were all volunteers. Wallace was totally deceived and indicated that he was impressed by the camps. Consequently, he received a warm reception in the Soviet Union.
In the 1944 election, Wallace was replaced by Harry S. Truman as the Vice-Presidential candidate. Some commentators think that had Wallace become president in 1945, “there might have been no atomic bombings, no nuclear arms race, and no Cold War;” and a President Wallace would have been an appeaser that would have allowed the spread of Communism into countries like Iran, Greece, and Italy. After leaving office, Wallace became the editor of The New Republic, a progressive magazine. He also helped establish the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA), a progressive political organization that accepted members regardless of race, creed, or political affiliation including Communists adding to the perception that Wallace was at least a communist sympathizer.
The New Deal brought mixed benefits for African Americans. On the plus side, Roosevelt appointed an unprecedented number of African Americans to second-level positions in his administration. Although Blacks accounted for about 10% of the total population, the WPA, NYA, and CCC allocated 10% of their budgets to Blacks. They operated separate all-Black units with the same pay and conditions as White units. New Deal administrators worked to ensure Blacks received at least 10% of welfare assistance payments. The Fair Labor Standards Act helped boost wages for non-White workers in the South.1 Other New Deal policies played a major role in creating new employment opportunities to non-White workers.
With the start of WWII, the ravages of the Great Depression ended; and the benefits of the New Deal spread in the economy. The proportion of African American men employed in manufacturing positions rose significantly. Overtime provided larger paychecks in war industries and average living standards rose steadily. Real wages rose by 44% during the war. The percentage of families with an annual income of less than $2,000 fell from 75% to 25% of the population. In 1941, 40% of all American families lived on less than the $1,500. The median income was $2,000 a year. Eight million workers labored in poverty. From 1939 to 1944, wages and salaries more than doubled. Overtime pay and increased employment lead to a 70% rise in average weekly earnings during the war. Membership in organized labor increased by 50% between 1941 and 1945. The War Labor Board discouraged strikes; and new workers were encouraged to participate in the existing labor organizations resulting in improved working conditions, better fringe benefits, and higher wages. Consequently, workers enjoyed a level of well-being that they had never experienced before.” As a result, consumer expenditures rose by nearly 50% by 1944. Individual savings accounts climbed almost sevenfold during the war. The share of total income held by the top 5% of wage earners fell from 22% to 17% while the bottom 40% increased their share of the economic pie. In addition, during the war, the proportion of the American population earning less than $3,000 fell by half. In 1932, most Americans African voted Republican. However, since Blacks felt the sting of the depression’s wrath even more severely than Whites, they welcomed any help. Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Democrats provided that help. In 1936, almost all African Americans (and many Whites) shifted from the “Party of Lincoln” to the Democrat Party. By the end of WWII, especially in several Northern states, Black allegiance to Democrats was solidified and survives into the 21st century.
New Deal Impacts on African Americans
Unfortunately, many programs were not specifically targeted to alleviate the much higher unemployment rate of Blacks. Some were even unfavorable to Blacks. The Agricultural Adjustment Act, for example, helped many White farmers but reduced the need of farmers to hire tenant farmers or sharecroppers which were predominantly Black. Thousands of Blacks were thrown out of work and replaced by Whites. On some jobs, Blacks were paid less than the National Recovery Administration (NRA)wage minimums because some White employers considered the NRA’s minimum wage “too much money for Negrs”. By August 1933, Blacks called the NRA the “Negro Removal Act.” An NRA study found that the NIRA put 500,000 African Americans out of work. In addition, the New Deal was racially segregated as Blacks and Whites rarely worked alongside each other. The largest relief program was the WPA. It operated segregated units, as did its youth affiliate the NYA. Blacks were hired by the WPA as supervisors in the North, but of 10,000 WPA supervisors in the South only 11 were Black. Historian Anthony Badger argues that “New Deal programs in the South routinely discriminated against Blacks and perpetuated segregation.” Although work camps in the North were initially integrated, by July 1935, practically all the camps in the United States were segregated, and Blacks were strictly limited in the supervisory roles they were assigned. Kinker and Smith argue that “even the most prominent racial liberals in the New Deal did not dare to criticize Jim Crow”.
There was no attempt whatsver to end segregation or to increase Black rights in the South, and several leaders that promoted the New Deal were racist and antisemitic. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, former Chicago NAACP president, was one of the Roosevelt Administration’s most prominent supporters of Blacks. In 1937, when a Southern Senator accused him of trying to break down segregation laws Ickes wrote him to deny that:
I think it is up to the states to work out their social problems if possible. I have never dissipated my strength against the particular stone wall of segregation. I believe that wall will crumble when the Negro has brought himself to a high educational and economic status. Moreover, while there are no segregation laws in the North, there is segregation in fact; and we might as well recognize this.
Although Roosevelt appointed a “Black Cabinet” of African American advisers on race relations and African American issues and publicly denounced lynching as “murder,” he did not push federal anti-lynching legislation since he believed that such legislation was unlikely to pass. Since Southern Democrats were critical to his legislative coalition, he did not oppose Southern Jim Crow laws or support of federal anti-lynch laws to avoid alienating Southern Democrats and endanger New Deal programs.
The fact, that African Americans completely switched allegiance from Republicans, the party of Lincoln, to Democrats by 1948, baffles me. From Civil War until the 1968 Fair Housing Act, the last major modern Cilil Rights legislation, Republicans, not Democrats, championed African American causes. Senate Democrats filibustered or attempted to filibuster every piece of Civil Rights legislation from the first bill passed during the Republican Eisenhower Administration in 1957 to the last passed during the Democrat Johnson Administration in 1968. Although Democrat Presidents signed most bills into law, the votes of Republican Congressmen ensured passage of all the Civil Rights legislation of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Although African Americans benefited economically under FDR, his record on Civil Rights was, in my opinion, appalling. FDR made no effort to eliminate Jim Crow laws, including voter suppression, in the South. He did nothing to stop or reduce segregation anywhere in the nation. His efforts to promote equal employment opportunities for African Americans was marginal at best. He did nothing to promote fair and equitable educational opportunities for African Americans. Finally, and most egregiously, FDR never endorsed passage federal anti-lynch laws in Congress.
Despite the above issues, Black allegiance to Democrats and their poor Civil Rights record between 1877 and 1945 and beyond could be explained by one historical event which haunts me. In 1877, Republicans bought the Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for withdrawal of all federal troops from the South. As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877, the last three Republican states in the south, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina became Democratic ending the Reconstruction era. The Democrat Party gained control of the south ushering in the Jim Crow era, Black voter suppression, segregated equal but separate facilities and institutions, anarchy and violence to keep Blacks in their place, and a rise in White supremacy and the KKK. After about 250 years of slavery, Republicans promised freedom only to basically allow freedom to be snatched away after only 12 years of freedom. This betrayal could explain why African Americans abandoned Republicans for Democrats in the 1940’s.
Modern Black Allegiance to Democrats
Since the passage of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960’s, Black allegiance to Democrats has been unwavering with at least 80% support throughout the nation. Republican President Dewitt D. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which was vigorously opposed by Southern Senate Democrats. Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson, despite opposition by Southern Senate Democrats and most Southern Representatives in the House, signed all three of the 1960’s Civil Rights Acts into law. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was opposed by 78% of Senate Democrats and 74% of House Democrats. Rev. Dr. Maritn Lother King Jr. was present when Johnson signed the bill into law. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was approved by 75% of the Senate Democrats and 81% of the House Democrats. President Johnson signed the Act into law with King, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and other civil rights leaders attending the ceremony. The 1968 Fair Housing Act passed Congress with 76% Senate Democrat approved. All Southern Democrats objected except three and one who abstained. 71% of the House Democrats approved. The Fair Housing Act was signed shortly after the assignation of Dr. King. The fact that two of the three 1960’s Civil Rights laws were approved by Congressional Democrats, who were in the majority; and all three bills were signed into law by President Johnson, a Democrat, assured Black allegiance to Democrats from then until now.
The Johnson Administration also established numerous policies and legislation that strengthened Black allegiance to Democrats. After the assignation of President John F. Kennedy in November of 1963, President Johnson was sworn into office and began his work to create a Great Society using his War of Poverty as his main tool. The Great Society Executive actions and legislation he proposed were the most aggressive since Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Great Society included the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act establishing the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Job Corps to help the underprivileged break the poverty cycle by helping them develop job skills, further their education and find work, the National Work Study Program to help students pay for college, loans and guarantees for employers to provide jobs to the unemployed, provide funds to establish agricultural co-ops, aid to help unemployed parents to enter the workforce, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start preschool programs, the 1965, Elementary and Secondary Education Act guaranteed federal funding for education in low-income school districts, the 1965 Housing and Urban Development Act provided federal funds to cities for urban renewal and development, the 1965 National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act since the arts and humanities belong to all the people of the United States not just private citizens, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts to study the humanities and fund and support cultural organizations such as museums, libraries, public television, public radio and public archives, and the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act which ended immigration nationality quotas, although it focused on reuniting families and still placed limits on immigrants per country and total immigration.
In 1968, President Richard M. Nixon set out to revamp the Great Society. Many Republicans still wanted to help the poor while reducing costs. Other Republicans and supporters of traditional values resented what they saw as government handouts and felt the government should butt out of Americans’ lives altogether. Consequently, political infighting for social reform has been raging ever since. Johnson’s Great society initiatives reinforced Black allegiance to Democrats while the Republican efforts to streamline its social programs and the idea that government should butt out of Americans lives altogether pushed African Americas away from Republicans.
From the African American perspective, it is not difficult to believe that the Republican desire to control the costs of the Great Society welfare programs was racist and an effort to reduce their ability to improve their lives, economically, educationally, and culturally. African Americans did not and still do not believe that government should butt out of their lives. The crux of the debate is whether government welfare programs create dependency on government at the expense of self-reliance and hard work and reduce the ability of people to better themselves. Those who believe in traditional values felt that dependance on government creates low self-esteem, hopelessness, and depression. Conservatives also understand the African American middle class and business class was expanding long before the New Deal and Great Society including Jim Crow era expansion when the African American community looked after and supported each other because the government would not help.
According to the 2020 article, Why are Blacks Democrats? by Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird, the purpose of Black allegiance to Democrats is to leverage their political strength as a minority group in a majority based political system, Black Americans have come to prioritize group solidarity in party politics. This partisan loyalty became a norm of group behavior, something you do as a Black person, an expectation of behavior meant to empower the group. As candidate Biden said in the 2020 Presidential campaign, If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t Black! Support for the Democrat Party is insured through social rewards and penalties which recognize compliance and punish defection of racial group members. Interestingly, it is the social and spatial segregation of Black Americans that makes all this work. This decision to ensure collective action for the larger group interest is an effective strategy for leveraging political power, especially in a two-party system. A divided group minimizes the likelihood of responsiveness by either party, but as a partisan voting bloc, Blacks are positioned to push their issues onto the party agenda. If the Democrats fail to be responsive Blacks can threaten to withhold their vote by not turning out. This is how racialized social constraint maintains both Black party loyalty and Black political power. This African American requirement to maintain their individual Black allegiance to Democrats and ensure collective action leverage political power, and :group solidarity is a tenant of Marxism. The Marxist disdain for individualism will be discussed later in the section, The Assault on African American Culture. The idea that Blacks withhold votes if Democrats do not give them what they want is counterproductive. An abstention is a vote for the other party. The question, Is Black Allegiance to Democrats Still Justified? will be considered in detail in the next section.
As the map on the left indicates, Democrat majorities are closely linked to counties with the largest urban populations in their respective states. Many of these urban areas also have higher education institutions and large numbers of progressive academics. Both groups vote for Democrats. In many states, the urban populations constitute most of the state population. Rural areas contain most of the state’s land mass, agricultural land and production, and renewable and non-renewable natural resource production all of which often contribute significantly to the state’s gross economic productivity. Rural voters usually vote Republican. In states where urban populations compose most of their state’s population, the state is usually controlled by the Democrat Party. Comparing the map above with the two maps below showing the results of
the 2020 state elections confirms these observations. Urban Black allegiance to Democrats usually leads to election of Democrat mayors, city leadership groups, school boards, and prosecutors. Additionally, in states where urban populations form a majority, Democrat governors and legislatures are also usually elected. Urban Black allegiance to Democrats gives Democrats control over virtually all aspects of life in urban African American population centers and communities. Therefore, Democrats have had a responsibility to ensure that the lives of African Americans were improved since they gained Black allegiance to Democrats in the 1940’s.
For Democrats in these areas, Black lives should actually matter; and the lives of their African American constituents should have improved every day during the last 80 years. African Americans should have benefited from their Black allegiance to Democrats.
Is Black Allegiance to Democrats Still Justified?
To quote President Donald J. Trump while seeking the African American vote as the Republican candidate in the 2016 election and sitting President and candidate in the 2020 election, What do you have to lose? In other words, Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified? The question is not a Trump 2024 endorsement; but rather an endorsement of policies designed to make America great again (MAGA) and put We the People of the United States first in both domestic and foreign affairs. Under those Republican, MAGA, policies and initiatives, African Americans, and all minorities, achieved the lowest unemployment rates and highest prosperity in history prior to the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on the current status of education, poverty and fatherlessness, healthcare, crime, culture and the present economic situation for African Americans, indeed for all We the People, Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified?
In my old White man‘s opinion, African Americans should be asking some additional questions. Have African Americans benefited significantly from almost 80 years of Black allegiance to Democrats? Again, in my opinion, the answer to that question Is an emphatic, no. Another reasonable question is this, Has the progress made by African Americans during the last 80 years occurred because of Black allegiance to Democrats or in spite of that allegiance? This also seems to be a reasonable question.
One Black man’s answer to these questions appeared in an article by Larry Elder. In his 2004 Baltimore Sun article, The secret story of blacks’ success he observed that Illinois Republican Senate candidate Alan L. Keyes proposed exempting Blacks from paying federal income taxes for a couple generations. Keyes stated that slavery “was an egregious failure on the part of the federal establishment.” In my opinion, Keyes like others, failed to mention that slavery existed for 170 years before Constitutional, federal, governance began or that British mercantilism forced the start of slavery and its continuation until 1789. British mercantilism made slavery an economic necessity for successful agriculture in the South during colonial times. This is not an excuse for slavery, it simply supplies a historical context for slavery. Larry Elder, an African American, asked Who argues with that? What he meant was, who agrees with reparations, not who disagrees that slavery was egregious, because slavery was egregious.
Elder noted that despite slavery, Jim Crow, and racism, the progress of American Blacks is simply astounding. Black America, if divided into a separate country, ranks No. 16 in gross domestic product. Elder quotes economist Thomas Sowell, another African American, as follows:
Black economic progress increased tremendously well before ‘level-the-playing-field’ government policies and programs. In fact, 40 [years after] Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, the income gap between Blacks and Whites closed faster ‘prewar’ than ‘postwar.’
The economic rise of Blacks began decades earlier, before any of the legislation and policies that are credited with producing that rise. The continuation of the rise of Blacks out of poverty did not – repeat, did not – accelerate during the 1960s.
“The poverty rate among Black families fell from 87% in 1940 to 47% in 1960, during an era of virtually no major civil rights legislation or anti-poverty programs. It dropped another 17 percentage points during the decade of the 1960s and one percentage point during the 1970s, but this continuation of the previous trend was neither unprecedented nor something to be arbitrarily attributed to the programs like the War on Poverty.”
Elder observes that In America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible, authors Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom agree that the Black middle class expanded well before “affirmative action” In their book they state:
“The growth of the Black middle class long predates the adoption of race conscious social policies. In some ways, indeed, the Black middle class was expanding more rapidly before 1970 than after. … Many of the advances Black Americans have made since the Great Depression occurred before anything that can be termed ‘affirmative action’ existed.”
According to Elder, after President Ronald Reagan cut the top tax rate from 70% to 28%, Black income, business development, and business growth exploded. According to the National Review, by 1989, Black unemployment dropped from 20.4% to 11.4% while White unemployment dropped by only 4%…. A Black entrepreneurial class flourished.” According to the Census Bureau, the trend started under President Reagan continued through the Clinton years. Black-owned businesses increased almost three times faster than the total number of firms in the United States, receipts by Black-owned firms more than doubled, and from 1980 to 1990, the median income of Black households grew one and a half times faster than White households. Between 1992 and 1997, there was a 25.7% increase in Black-owned firms and a 32.5% increase in their gross sales.
In its 1963, Ebony magazine series called “If I Were Young Today,” Black high achievers offered advice to young Blacks. In his article, Paul Williams, said:
“Whatever one ds as a profession or livelihood, he should endeavor to read the current magazines pertaining to his work. One must keep pace with progress and what the other fellow is thinking and doing. In order to do this, he must read – read – read!!! He should strive to become a specialist and not just another architect, engineer or salesman.”
Elder noted that none of those offering advice even hinted at a need for race-based preferences. The road to success is simple, if not easily applied – hard work, sacrifice and, above all, the refusal to think like a victicrat. You know, the same formula used by Alan Keyes. To Democrats and progressives, “hard work,” “sacrifice,” and self-discipline (“read, read, read!!!”) are capitalistic values which they oppose. This begs the question, “Is Black allegiance to democrats still justified?”
Education
Black high school graduation rates are encouraging. In 1940, less than 8% of Blacks graduated from high school compared to 27% for Whites. By 2014, African American high school graduation rate was 86% and the White rate was 89%. At least two other internet articles came to the same conclusion. Unfortunately, a 2017, Pew Research Center article by Drew Desilver, U.S. academic achievement lags that of many other countries, is discouraging. Fifteen-year-old U.S. students rank 24th in science and reading, and 38th in mathematics, compared to students in other countries of the world. Additionally, the 2020 Brookings Institute article, by Kenneth Shores, Ha Eun Kim, and Mela Still, Categorical inequalities between Black and white students are common in US schools”but they don’t have to be, is disheartening for African Americans. The chart and discussion below 
portray critical inequalities in educational outcomes and opportunities for Black and White high school students. Teachers who use race as a classifier, which is unacceptable, instead of objective standards like test scores and grade point averages, often create racial disparities in opportunities for African American students. Racial differences in socio-economic status tend to account for most variation suspension rates, classification into specialized classes, and placement in advanced courses. Many educators suggest that sorting students into different educational experiences is attributable to students’ characteristics, race,
or Blacks don’t take advanced math because they confront steeper out-of-school challenges which is beyond the control of schools. In the authors view, schools create these socially relevant categories, and teachers and school leaders sort students into them creating categorical inequalities for Black students. Consequently, school districts where Black students are worse off academically or socio-economically, tend to increase the educational disadvantages that Black students face. Districts with greater inequality, segregation, and lower overall socio-economic status also has larger achievement and disciplinary gaps between White and Black students. With the insights they present, the authors claim that school districts can either perpetuate or undo categorical inequalities.
The National School Board Association article Black Students in the Condition of Education 2020, article reports that 45% of Black students attended high-poverty schools, compared with 8% of white students; and about 25% of Black students, higher than the proportion of Blacks in the U.S. population, were enrolled in predominantly Black public schools. In the 2017“2018 school year, only two thirds of the Black students enrolled in Individuals with Disability Education Act programs graduated with a regular high school diploma. This was the lowest rate among all racial/ethnical groups. The National Report Card achievement scores showed that almost seven times more White students scored above the proficient level in Geography; and almost three times more White students scored above the proficient level in Reading compared to Black students. The results were within this range for History, Civics, Science, Math, and Technology and Engineering Literacy. The article noted that the proficiency gap between White and Black students has not closed.
In addition, U.S. educators continuously replace core academics with transformational social and cultural engineering curricula. The fact that overall student outcomes in reading, science, and math lag behind at least one fourth of the world’s countries including competitors like China seems irrelevant to our educators. Unfortunately, Black students are about three to four times less proficient in core subjects compared to White students and far behind many students of the world. The Miseducation of America by David Goodwin, President of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, is a review of the Fox Nation series, The Miseducation of America. Goodwin observes that progressives started their transformation of American education in 1907 with the Gary Plan. The progressive goal was complete removal Christianity and traditional values from America’s schools and elimination of America’s Christian identity. This identify perpetuated the Western Christian Paideia, Judeo-Christian values, the idea that men, all people, should be educated to be well-rounded, refined in intellect, morals, and physicality, so training of both the body and mind is important. Goodwin describes the conflict between the progressive vision and the Christian vision for America as follows:
The progressive narrative [paideia] tells us that our civilization today is the result of human progress over time, and now that science rules the day, they can improve civilization even further if given enough power and control. [The] Christian narrative teaches something else. Our present culture and civilization will remain great only insofar as it aligns with Truth. Because Truth is fixed and unchanging, we should guard our society from influences that conflict with it, and we should strive to pursue Truth.. The Progressives at the turn of the 20th century knew what they were up against. As long as the Western Christian Paideia defined our culture and civilization, the progressive agenda would be limited. Progressive philosophies, such as Critical Theory, Marxism, and the influence of the Frankfurt School, dominate education. Today, our schools are far from the engine of freedom that classical Christian education once was.
The progressive thinkers behind this plan were, and still are, primarily atheistic Marxists who used Frankfurt School concepts of critical theory to challenge all aspects of Western civilization, Biblical Christianity, and capitalism. In the late 1960’s, Herbert Marcuse, a Frankfurt School critical theorist and Father of the new left, observed that a propaganda based educational dictatorship would be required before radical Marxist change could occur in Western Europe and the United states. Marcuse determined that working class labors were no longer a subversive force capable of bringing about revolutionary change in western society and culture. Consequently, he identified anti-capitalists, radical intellectuals, the socially marginalized, exploited, persecuted outcasts and outsiders of ethnic minorities, people of color, the unemployed, and the unemployable as trainable revolutionaries. Ethnic and gender study programs were established in most universities to train the envisioned revolutionaries. Critical Race Theory, CRT, Critical Gender Theory, CGT, and Queer Theory, QT, were, and still are, useful tools for these revolutionaries. The educators trained for this transformation of our nation now teach our children, including African Americans, from Preschool to Ph.D., Marxism PP.
According to the on-line Britannica article, Basic tenets of critical race theory updated in 2021 by Brian Duignan., there are six basic tenants of CRT. First, according to Duignan,
Race is an undefined social construction. [To] some theorists, race is a set of physical characteristics including skin color, certain facial features, and hair texture; and imagined set of psychological and behavioral tendencies. The [imagined psychological and behavioral tendencies] have been created and maintained by dominant groups (in the United States, whites of western European descent) to justify their oppression and exploitation of other groups on the basis of the latter’s supposed inferiority, immorality, or incapacity for self-rule.”
Second, Duignan notes that CRT considers racism to be the normal experience of most people of color. African Americans, and other minorities, face discrimination and unfair treatment in the public and private sectors. Third, the racial hierarchy of American society may be unaffected or even reinforced by improvements in the legal status of oppressed or exploited people. Our laws, from the Constitution and Amendments to the laws of today, represent institutional White racism, structural racism, designed to oppress all minorities. Fourth, minority groups are periodically assigned negative stereotypes that benefit the needs or interests of whites. Fifth, no individual can be adequately identified by membership in a single group. An African American person may also be a Christian. Sixth, people of color are uniquely qualified to speak on behalf of other members of their group (or groups) regarding the forms and effects of racism.
Progressives claim that CRT is not taught in our preschool through grade 12 schools, but Duignan contradicts this claim when he writes, generalized versions of some [CRT] claims appear in the curricula of some public schools. Indeed, CRT retraining or re-education classes are now required in major corporations and the military. In preschool through grade 12 schools, the curricula teach the basic ideas of CRT; but the curricula are not re-education; they are education. Our White children must be taught that they will all benefit from White Privilege, and they are all racist oppressors who will create negative stereotypes of minorities, benefit from laws, and institutions to maintain White dominance, oppression, and exploitation of minorities. Our Black and other minority children must be taught that they will be subjected to oppression, negative stereotyping, domination, exploitation, and legal and institutional obstacles designed by White people to maintain white superiority over them. To put it succinctly, CRT in our public schools teaches our children that White people are all cruel, mean, and evil, White Supremacists, whether they know it or not; and Black people are the oppressed victims of all White people. CRT curricula includes texts and literature written for each level of students, Preschool through grade 12. I my opinion, CRT is divisive and racist.
Critical Gender Theory, CGT, curricula, including texts and lessons developed for students from preschool to grade 12, is now taught in public schools nationwide. The Bartleby Research article on Critical Gender Theory states that gender, a device by which society controls its members, revolves around the theory that gender is a social construct designed to subjugate women as system of oppression. CGT refuses binary gender characterizations in connection with sexuality. This theory says get rid of the norm and we do not need to come up with categories that are outside the norm.
Queer Theory, QT, and CGT are interrelated aspects of Critical Theory’s critique of traditional Western Judeo-Christian culture and traditional family values. The on-line article Queer Theory is a review of Queer in The Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice. CGT and QT are aggressive assaults on traditional values. QT is one of the key contemporary critical theories of sex, gender, and sexuality. Therefore, it is one of the handful of specific and activist-driven approaches to ‘applied postmodernism.’ QT disputes the power dynamics and social constructions concerning homosexuality. The QT review states,
QT exists to antagonize norms, that is, anything that can be considered normal by society (even [an] accurate, neutral description) that carries a morally normative exceptionwhich [QT] deems intrinsically oppressive. This attitude is probably most clearly understood in the dichotomy normal [which has a positive connotation] versus abnormal [which has a negative connotation]. QT wouldn’t merely seek to expand the boundaries of normal’ to include circumstances like homosexuality or intersex conditions; but to [establish] the idea that normal is constraining and oppressive.
QT seems to deliberately confuse anything that is. normal [or] commonplace [like] heterosexuality or the sexual binary. Any variation [from normal] must be understood pejoratively and seen as illegitimate. Society has strong expectations for people to [be] normal. [QT] sees these expectations as [an] application of dominance to create oppression. Conflation of normal [with] moral is the centerpiece of QT. [This conflation of normal and moral makes it] relatively easy for QT to keep muddying this water for its own activist purposes sometimes called queering, [queering something, or just being queer].
Being queer [is not] being LGBT because being queer cannot accept normalcy or stability even within those categories. In fact, there should be no categories at all other than queer [which is woke or critically conscious under QT doctrines] and ‘not-yet-queer [or] bad’.
In her 2021 Heritage Foundation article, Woke Gender, Emilie Kao observed that like CRT, gender theory, CGT, (and QT) emerged from universities and have been propelled into the mainstream by identity politics. CGT rejects any relationship between biology and gender as biological essentialism. Accordingly, the biology of sex and gender (the way one expresses being male or female) are performed social constructs. Therefore, gender (and the body itself) can be reconstructed according to CGT and QT.
According to Kao, progressives insist that others must accept this dogma. This latest iteration of the sexual revolution is destructive to children and threatens the rights of parents to determine the upbringing of their children. The political lobbying organizations and woke capital hidden from parents, are transforming medicine and education into fields for transgender activism. Children are treated with a one size fits-all narrative, affirmative care, that has no basis in science, common sense, or compassion. Affirmative care uses hormonal and surgical interventions on minors to affirm gender identity. It limits counselors and doctors to affirming that boys are trapped in girls’ bodies, and vice-versa, even in children as young as 4 years old. Twenty states also ban talk therapy for gender dysphoria, meaning that counselors are forbidden from questioning a child as to whether he or she is actually trapped in the wrong body.
Ultimately, CGT and QT drives wedges between children and their parents. They also drive wedges between parents and activist educators promoting CGT and QT ideas in the classroom confusing children about their gender when they are emotionally and physically unprepared for the ideas. As Prof. Melissa Moschella has explained, despite the Supreme Court ruling in Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters affirming that parents have a fundamental and pre-political right to direct the education and upbringing of their children, judges have removed children from the custody of parents who opposed hormonal interventions for gender dysphoria. CGT and QT have so permeated American culture and law that parents who question it now risk challenges from the government. For parents to succeed in protecting children from woke gender ideology, they will need to do political battle. Like critical race theory, gender theory has entered pediatricians’ offices and classrooms through the work of political activists.
With this information in mind concerning the schools attended by African Americans, five questions seem reasonable. Have African Americans benefited significantly from almost 80 years of Black allegiance to Democrats? Has the progress made by African Americans during the last 80 years occurred because of Black allegiance to Democrats or in spite of that allegiance? Do African Americans approve of teachers’ unions, school boards, and educators who seek to undermine the rights of parents to demand an end to curricula, like CRT, CGT, and QT, that undermine African American’s traditional values, Christianity, and families? Should African Americans work to challenge or remove school boards that continue to fail to close the education gap between White and Black students? Since Democrats support teachers’ unions and school boards that support progressive curricula that failed our students, especially African Americans, Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified?
Poverty and Fatherlessness
Although the African American middle-class continues to grow, the Black family poverty rate was 23% with the Black female parent family poverty rate at a staggering 37% in 2014, the poverty rate declined 33% for all Black families and 55% for single female parent Black families. The trends related to poverty in the United States are similar for all families from 1967 to 2014. 
Chart: History of Poverty in Black American Families
Poverty among Black families is more severe for both two parent and single female parent families compared to all families in both categories. If White families in both categories was presented, the difference would be even more stark. The data clearly shows that single female parent Black families are three time more likely to suffer poverty than two parent Black families. Although the difference has declined since 2000, Black single female parent families are almost twice as likely to suffer poverty compared to Black two parent families. With this data in mind, the same two questions seem reasonable. Have African Americans benefited significantly from almost 80 years of Black allegiance to Democrats? Has the progress made by African Americans during the last 80 years occurred because of Black allegiance to Democrats or in spite of that allegiance?
In the Black Community News article, ’72 Percent’ Documentary on Fatherless Black Children, the Senior editor observed that Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report, The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, warned of the female-headed household crisis among Blacks due to an illegitimacy rate of about 24 % which would have devastating social consequences.
According to the author,
The saddest thing about out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the United States is the children are, for all intents and purposes, fatherless. A man is more emotionally and financially invested in his children when he lives with them and is married to their mother. Children who don’t live with their biological fathers are at higher risk for out-of-wedlock pregnancies, school truancy and drop-outs, and criminality. The majority of juvenile delinquents and adult prisoners grew up in female-headed households. Fatherless children are much more likely to suffer physical abuse, including sexual, because of the men their mothers bring home.
The Center for Health Journalism article, How Absent Fathers Are Hurting African American Boys by Lottie Joiner, painted a similarly dire picture for African American boys raised in fatherless homes. She described three Black boys who lived next door to her in a low-income neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Before their father died, he encouraged them to help their neighbors; and He kept close watch over them, warning his boys of the dangers that lurked in the streets. According to Joiner, after the boys’ father died life changed drastically for them. Although their mother tried to get help for her boys, none graduated from high school, two have criminal records, and the youngest was in drug rehab several times. Joiner asked, So what happened? and What did these young men need in their lives that their mother could not provide? She sought to answer those two questions with another, What happens to a boy ” specifically young African American men who are often faced with the eye of scrutiny from the world ” who ds not have a father present in his life. Joiner continued, If [young Black boys] don’t have a father in the home who can act as a source of support and one of your pillars for your formation of resilience, then you’re less likely to be resilient in the face of a lot of sources of trauma. She concluded that father-absence adversely impacted the mental health of Black boys and young men leading to major depression disorders. She quoted one Washington D.C. family therapist Ayize Ma’at who said, They’re hurting. They’reacting out pain. They’re just trying to meet a need ” the need to be included, to be loved, to be welcomed, respected, and wanted. Sadly, in my opinion, gangs often fulfill that need.
Another potential factor contributing to fatherlessness in African American homes is fatherless fathers or fathers whose fathers abused them, or their mothers. These men may not know how to be the kind of fathers or husbands they want to be or fear failure or becoming abusive themselves. These fathers could choose to be absent from their families. As noted previously, boys and young men raised without fathers are likely school dropouts, substance abusers, or become involved in gangs or other criminal activities, often becoming absentee fathers themselves. The result is generational fatherlessness in the less affluent segments of the African America community. Unfortunately, Joiner’s article was short on real answers to the problem of the adverse impact of fatherless homes on African American boys and young men. Her answer seemed to be, It takes a village with mental health and mentoring resources.
Speculation, concerning the causes of absentee father homes among African Americans, abounds. Some answers seem obvious to an outsider like me, who many African Americans would call a racist old White man. The answers are socially, racially, economically politically, and regionally complicated. The answers also require patience, understanding, and open, frank dialog. Since 37% of the Black families living in poverty are fatherless, double the percentage of Blacks in the U.S. population, every potential factor should be considered. From my perspective, one potentially important issue may be government programs that provide resources to single moms where benefits increase based on the number of children in a home. Many conservatives believe that these programs incentivize father-absent homes rather than traditional family values. Three articles may provide some insight into the issue. According to the 2022 article, How To Get Government Help & Assistance As A Single Mom, a single mom can find government help. There are thousands of state and federal programs to cover food, rent, utility bills, and credit card debt so single moms can have extra money to spend on their children. In the 2020 article, How Much in Benefits Can a Single Mother Receive?, the author states, Mothers who are unemployed or make less than $25,000 per year are eligible for more benefits. Single mothers with many children also usually receive more benefits. In her 2022 article, 18 government assistance programs for moms with no income, Emma Johnson observes that about 56% of the people who live in poverty in the United States are women, and most of those are unmarried women of color with children who live below the federal poverty line. Universal Basic Income, or UBI, is an efficient, effective way to alleviate poverty and improve society overall. These programs give people a guaranteed sum of cash each month to get the services or resources they need. Single moms stand to benefit the most from this kind of aide. Each of these articles, and many others, provide links help moms find programs that meet their specific needs.
Since fatherlessness contributes to both poverty and criminality at twice the rate in Black culture compared to White culture, the same questions are relevant. Have African Americans benefited significantly from almost 80 years of Black allegiance to Democrats? Has the progress made by African Americans during the last 80 years occurred because of Black allegiance to Democrats or in spite of that allegiance? Other questions about how single moms are supported seem relevant, Should the programs be tied to required self-improvement classes or education with associated childcare provisions? Should the number of children receiving supplements be limited? Should the programs require non-abortive birth control where failure to comply would end subsidies for more children? Does welfare for single mothers encourage or discourage unmarried women from having babies? These are difficult issues to solve. Two final questions are appropriate. Have the programs supported by Democrats provided meaningful solutions to date? Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified when it comes to fatherlessness and poverty in Black culture and many communities?
Healthcare
Several other factors contribute to fatherlessness in African American hones. Healthcare is a significant factor related to fatherless African American homes. In 1992, Black men were about 10% to 33% more likely than White men to die from most diseases, a trend that continues to this day. According to Jerry Kennard, in 2019, heart attacks and cancer accounted for about 44% of all deaths for Black men. For young Black men between about 13 -15 and 44 years of age, homicide was the leading cause of death accounting or about 30% of all deaths in this age group, exceeding heat attack and cancer deaths.
Crime
In his 2020 article, 100 Black Crime Statistics: Data, Trends & Predictions, Arthur Zuckerman provides important information concerning crimes committed by African Americans. He makes the following important statement regarding Black crime in the United States:
“Despite the massive disparity in population, Black felons outnumber Whites in crimes like manslaughter, robbery, and illegal gambling. They also take up large percentages of both serious and petty crimes. Tighter law enforcement measures might be needed to improve the safety [in Black] communities, provided that the suspects are judged based on their acts and not their skin color.”
African Americans comprise about 15%; Whites comprise about 62%; and bi-racial Whites and Whites comprise about 71% of the US population. In 2017, 53.1% of the arrests for manslaughter, 54% of the arrests for robbery, 33.5% of the arrests for aggravated assault, 28.7% of rape arrests, 29.8% of burglary arrests, and 43.9% of the arrests for illegal firearms were Black. in 2015, 58.8% of the Blacks in prison had committed violent crimes; and, in 2013, Blacks accounted for 52.2% of all murder arrests while Whites made up 45.3%. In Black-on-Black violence, familiarity and proximity are critical factors. According to the FBI, in 2018, most murder victims are acquaintances of the suspects when their relationship to each other was identified. Crimes committed by friends and family exceed those perpetrated by strangers. 70.3% of the violent incidents suffered by Black victims were committed by Black offenders. In 2015 2,380 Blacks were accosted by Black killers. The proportion of Black-on-Black homicides to the number of Black people killed was 89.3% in 2015. For all crime categories discussed, one striking statistic is greatly concerning. The rate of criminality is two to three times greater than the proportion of African Americans in the U.S. population. Gangs, their drug trade and the associated criminality, and resultant incarceration also contributes to fatherlessness in Black families. Where African American crime is concerned, the same two questions are appropriate. Have African Americans benefited significantly from almost 80 years of Black allegiance to Democrats? Has the progress made by African Americans during the last 80 years occurred because of Black allegiance to Democrats or in spite of that allegiance? Another relevant question is, Why is criminality so high among African Americans? The high proportion of father-absence among African American families may provide one part of the answer to these questions.
The Assault on African American Culture
As a racist old White man, and total outsider, the assault on African American culture and society seems to contribute to many of the issues adversely affecting African Americans. From my White privileged, white supremacist perspective, asking pointed questions designed to promote critical thinking and dialog, is the least provocative way to approach the issues. First, Ds the progressive assault, on traditional values, morality, and ethics in the overall American culture and society, contribute to African American issues related to education and the noted racial disparities, poverty and fatherlessness, healthcare, and crime? The answer to problems related to these issues is a resounding yes for both White and Black Americans; but Why?
The answer lies in the Frankfurt School’s application of critical theory to move people and cultures to accept atheistic Marxist progressive ideology as the bases of governance and society. Critical theory uses every academic discipline and most aspects of our culture to promote the revolutionary, transformational change they envision for the United States. Three of the most important disciplines used by critical theorists to accomplish their goals are psychiatry, psychology, and sociology. Research projects are developed and statistically designed by researchers in these disciplines to support the tenants of critical race theory, critical gender theory, Queer Theory, and attack Biblical Christianity, traditional values, and our system of governance.
Elimination of Christianity, especially Biblical Christianity, and our traditional Judeo-Christian values as major influences on American culture and society, is the primary goal of Marxist progressives. In my opinion, progressives oppose Christianity for several reasons First, both Judaism and Christianity teach that each individual is important to God; and individualism is an anathema to Marxists since their success depends of the individual’s subjugation to the collective. Consequently, the individual is worthless compared to the value of the collective. In contrast, Biblical Christianity teaches that the individual has infinite value because
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still Sinners, Christ (God’s only Son) died for us (each individual)” (Romans 5:8 NIV).
The value of the individual is magnified by the fact that
The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs “ heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory (Romans 8:16-17 NIV).
As joint heirs with God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, each Christian individual has infinite value in the sight of the God. Marxist philosophers have expressed their disdain for the role of Christianity in promoting the individual. Ludwig Feuerbach wrote,
Christianity alienated man’s communal character as a species into individual relationships with an external being resulting in the rise of individualism. The essence of Man is contained only in community, in the unity of Man with Man. [In the relationship between] ‘I and Thou,’ [Christ had become] ‘Thou.’ [Religion was misdirected].
Engels observed that the abstract subjectivity of individualism to be a problem of the Christian-Germanic view of the world and the Christian state. Accordingly, the free and spontaneous association of men would lead to an ever certain victory over the unreason of the individual.
The second reason progressives oppose Christianity is the relationship between the Biblical Christian Church and traditional Christian family to the nurture and training of each generation of Biblical Christian individuals. Evangelism, conversion of non-Christians, is a primary task of Biblical Christian churches and individuals. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whver believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Each person on earth is individually valued and loved by God. While discussing the church and religion in The Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote, Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. In A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Nikolai Bukharin wrote, religion [especially Christianity] must be opposed actively [since it would take too long for it to] die out of its own accord.
The traditional Biblical Christian family with a father, mother, and their children is another reason progressives oppose Christianity. The Christian family serves the same basic function as the Christian church with the primary emphasis on their children. This family model ds not fit the preferred progressive family model. It is both hierarchical and patriarchal, an anathema to LGBTQ+ activists and social Marxists. Marxist, progressive opposition to the traditional family is clear. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote:
Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois (ruling class, landowners, and capitalists) family based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie.
In The Mothers: A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions, Robert Briffault observed that paternal families were a product of economic systems where property inheritance by individuals was important to society. Briffault’s vision for the future family is not traditional. He concluded:
The expectation that the decay of the patriarchal family as a result of the serious crisis of the individualistic, competitive economy would increase, and that a society no longer characterized by competitiveness would be able finally to release social emotions which went beyond the narrow and distorting circle of family.
Friedrich Engels viewed the Bourgeois, traditional Biblical family, as an institution of male dominance in which the wife simply provided heirs for legal transmission of property to succeeding generations in exchange for sustenance. Engels considered the relationship a form of prostitution. Michele Barrett defined family as simply kinship arrangements or the organization of a household. This view is consistent with the current demands of the LGBTQ+ agenda. The role of the Biblical Christian family in relation to raising strong Biblical Christian individuals is a significant reason that progressives oppose Christianity.
Thirdly, progressives oppose Christianity because of the relationship between individualism and capitalism. They understand that Biblical Christianity produces individuals who are confident, self-reliant, well-rounded, refined in intellect, morals, and physicality, potential capitalists and entrepreneurs. Progressives know that virtually every major corporation was founded by one or a few individuals who had confidence in our Constitutional, capitalistic, economic system to risk starting their business. Since Marxist progressives oppose capitalism, Christianity must be opposed and every level. A fact that most progressives refuse to admit.
It seems that African American culture and society have suffered greatly from the progressive assault on traditional values, including Biblical Christianity, the traditional family, individualism, and capitalism. Since Democrats support the progressive assault of traditional values, “Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified?”
Marxist progressives and Critical Theorists use education and telecommunication industries as tools of teaching and indoctrination. Marxism has been largely assimilated into modern social sciences. Consequently, our students, now from Preschool to PhD., Marxism PP, are taught by curricula determined by the left’s educational dictatorship. CRT, CGT, and QT are now stealthily taught in virtually every discipline, especially liberal arts and social sciences. With these educational programs, each new generation of citizens, including leaders of the industries below, becomes more tolerant of and often in favor of a more progressive culture and socialist society in the United States. The cultural weapons used by progressive Critical Theorists to deliver their ideas to the people of the United States for this assault include the news media, movie industry, music, television, advertising, fashion, and literature. Movies, television, music, and literature routinely portray extra-marital sex, including bi-sexual and homosexual characters, and unmarried co-habitation as acceptable. The behavior occurs in most prime-time television programming and advertisements viewed by our children. On these venues, children are exposed to hundreds of violent acts each year. Although criminals usually suffer consequences for crime in hourly dramas, seasons long series like the Sopranos and Empire depict the lavish wealth potentially generated by crime and drug empires. The events portrayed tell children that non-traditional sex and families are acceptable, and carefully done, crime pays. The news media usually portrays interactions between law enforcement and Black criminals as prime examples of systematic racism” or White privilege. When these interactions result in a Black fatality, news and social media, and civil rights leaders often fan flames of protest before the facts are known. The chart below provides some interesting data regarding deaths caused by Police brutality. It shows that
From The real number of unarmed black people killed by police Washington Post, 2022
the rate of Black deaths caused by police is about the same as the rate of Black criminality and less than total white deaths which are also like White criminality rates.
According to The U.S. Sun, 2020 article How many unarmed black people are killed by police each year? By Patrizia Rizzo, from 2013-2019, over 1,000 people were killed by police, and one third were black. The article also notes that 765 people killed by police in 2020, 28% were black. The article notes its discouragement since the Black population is only 13% of the U.S. population. As noted in the Crime section above, For all crime categories discussed, one striking statistic is greatly concerning. The rate of criminality is two to three times greater than the proportion of African Americans in the U.S. population. The article title implies that most of the blacks killed by police, 201 to 333 according to the percentages in the article, were unarmed. Yet, the article cites only three examples of unarmed victims killed by police brutality in America, noting that two of the three victims highlighted in the article resisted arrest; but, they should not have died. The article failed to supply actual data regarding the number of unarmed, compliant Blacks killed by police during the time periods discussed. Nor did the article mention that the rate of Black criminality and deaths at the hands of police is virtually identical. The article also failed to provide data about the number of Black deaths occurring during violent altercations with police involving weapons., guns, or hand to hand battles threatening the lives of police.
In her 2020 Wall Street Journal opinion article, The Myth of Systemic Police Racism, Heather Mac Donald wrote,
“The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is ‘no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police,’ they concluded.
When an African American dies in an encounter with police, especially a White officer, is the news coverage and national civil rights activist’s response designed to discover the facts about the encounter, stir Black resentment toward police, and promote the CRT doctrine that our policing and criminal justice system is systematically racist? In my opinion, the facts are usually secondary to the narrative and CRT agenda.
A Result of the Assault: Breonna Taylor
One tragic incident puts the assault on traditional values and African American culture into perspective, the Breonna Taylor death at the hands of Louisville, KY, police. The incident tragically combines extra-marital relationships, potential single female parenthood, crime and drugs, policing, and the CRT narrative that our criminal justice system is systematically racist into a single event.
In the predawn hours of March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by Louisville, KY. police executing a search warrant looking for illegal drugs and drug money. Taylor was a 26-year-old Black emergency medical technician. By the night of the raid, Taylor had broken ties with her previous boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, a convicted drug dealer and accused weapons trafficker in Louisville. Taylor had been dating Glover on and off for several years. She resumed another apparently long term relationship with Kenneth Walker, which developed into a serious live-in relationship according to an American Thinker article. Walker had a license to carry a 9 mm Glock. Some reports note that Walker kept other weapons in Taylor’s apartment. The reason Walker had a license to carry was difficult to determine.
The American Thinker article provided details of the information evaluated by the court that issued the search warrant for Taylor’s apartment. Glover made frequent trips to Taylor’s apartment and once took a package from Taylor’s apartment to a known drug house. When Glover was arrested in January, he called Taylor who arranged for an associate of Glover to post bail. Taylor also was involved in procuring bail for another Glover associate. The article, Fact-checking claims about Breonna Taylor’s death reports that a car registered in Taylor’s name stopped at drug properties under surveillance; and Glover listed her apartment as his home address leading police to believe that Glover “used her apartment to receive mail, keep drugs, or stash money earned from the sale of drugs. This information was sufficient for the court to issue a warrant for the raid on Taylors apartment.
On the night of the raid, Talor and walker herd loud pounding on the apartment door, got out of bed, and went into the hallway yelling to learn who was pounding on the door of the apartment. Walker was in front, and Taylor was slightly behind and beside him. When plain clothed police broke through the door and Walker saw three men, he fired one shot that struck one office in the leg. Walker later claimed that he was afraid the intruders were Glover and associates, and he shot in self-defense. Walker also claimed that he did not hear police announce themselves. Which is contradicted by a witness. It is reasonable to assume the Walker did not hear the police due to the other noise of the raid. The officers immediately returned fire to neutralize the shooter in accordance with active shooter protocol and training. Inexplicably, Talor, who was unarmed, was shot five times, once fatally, and died at the scene. Walker, the shooter, was unharmed. Much of this information is also reported in NBC on-line , USA TODAY, and other articles. Details of the case are also presented by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron at a Sept. 23, 2020, press conference.
As soon as social media started sharing news of Breonna Taylor’s death protests began. These early reports contained both false and incorrect information. She was unarmed [true] and shoot in bed [false]. She died due to a no-knock warrant executed at the wrong address [both false]. The claim that the target, Jamarcus Glover [false], was not in the apartment was a misrepresentation of the target which was the apartment not Glover. The raid was botched because no drugs or drug money was in the apartment. In situations like this, there is no guarantee that targeted money and drugs are at the target location when raids are conducted. This false information and misrepresentation of the situation quickly fanned protests and demonstrations in Louisville and other cities around the nation. Benjamin Crump quickly became the Taylor family attorney for litigation against the City of Louisville. He was joined by Al Sharpton, and other civil rights activists almost immediately who agitated the African American community with claims of injustice and systematic racism on the part of Louisville police. They also demanded that the officers involved be charged with murder before the facts of the case were determined. By late May after the May 25 death of unarmed George Floyd at the hands of a White police officer, later convicted of murder, large Black Live Matter demonstrations turned into a summer of protests that turned into riots, death, and $2 billion in property damage throughout the United States and Louisville. Breonna Taylor’s family received a $12,000,000 suit settlement from the City of Louisville, KY, on September 15,2020.
In my opinion, Breonna Taylor’s death was caused as much by the Marxist, progressive assault on traditional values, Biblical Christianity, the traditional patricentric family, morality, and ethics as it was caused by the Louisville, KY, police. The assault on traditional values, supported by Democrats, told Breonna that extra-marital relationships and pre-marital co-habitation are ok, dating drug dealers is ok, helping drug dealers and their associates is ok, and, if she knew the situation, living in the apartment listed as the address of a drug dealer is safe and ok. These issues are problems in both the Black and White communities; but, with the rate of criminality in the Black community that is 2-3 times greater than the percentage of Blacks in the U.S., the issues impact African Americans more severely. Is it reasonable to ask, “Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified?”
Run, Resist, Don’t Comply or Die, Means You Probably Will Die
As a father and grandfather, the needless deaths of African Americans who are killed by law enforcement officers because they run from, resist, or don’t comply with the orders of the officers is unnecessary and tragic. It is incomprehensible to me that Young Black Americans, especially law abiding young Black boys and men, are taught by their community and civil rights leaders, parents, peers, educators, mainstream news outlets, and the entertainment industry that encounters with law officers are usually dangerous to them today. Every race has a few bad apple racists. Black assaults on Asians are a growing racist problem. The vast majority of White Americans abhor White supremacists and racists and want to see them punished as a scourge on the overall American Culture. Any law officer who racially abuses their authority must be removed from law enforcement. In today’s environment, law officers understand that every encounter with the public could result in their injury or death, loss of their job, or possible indictment, prosecution, and conviction if they fail to do their job safely and lawfully. Consequently, most of the law officers encountered by Black Americans do not want to harm them. In my opinion, if the greater African American community taught Black Americans this simple phrase regarding encounters with the law, the death toll would drop immeasurably.
Comply, don’t die.
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In contrast, the patricentric, patriarchal, traditional, Biblical family has consisted of a husband or father, a wife or mother, and their children for thousands of years. This is the family model even in most non-Judeo-Christian cultures and societies. The exceptions are polygamous cultures where men are allowed more than one wife and female dominated matriarchal cultures. In some matriarchal cultures, wealth is transmitted to the youngest female of the family since she has the greatest potential longevity. However, the polygamy of the Old Testament kings of Israel and Juda was not in accordance with God’s plan for families. The Old Testament narratives of these families showed the problems they generated for generations and decades that followed.
The evidence is clear to those of us looking at the evidence from a spiritual perspective. When we eliminate God from our culture and society, we bury our children. We bury our brothers and sisters. We bury our fathers and mothers. We bury our law enforcement officers. The first Chief Justice of our Supreme Court, John Jay, along with most of the Founders clearly stated their sentiment about the importance of Christian precepts to maintain theBlessings of Liberty,Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happinessin far less stark terms.