I'm reading comments in diaries here that have made me so upset recently, that I was not sure I would continue to read here.
My blood pressure is high enough as it is.
But this is MyDD - and we are all Democrats.
Whether supporters of HRC, BHO, John Edwards or others, what is supposed to hold us together is our party and the battle to win against McCain in the fall.
The Democratic Party has changed since I was a child in the late 40's & 50's.
Once a bastion of Southern white power, the flight of the Dixiecrats into the Republican Party (for the most part) the challenges to the Dems which came from the Mississipi Freedom Democratic Party, and the new coaltion that was forged as a result is something we all could be proud of.
Let's review the recent voting records of black Americans:
How the African-American presidential vote split through the years between the Democratic and the Republican candidates:
Year Democrat Black support Repub. Black support1984 Walter Mondale 90% Ronald Reagan 9%
1988 Michael Dukakis 90% George H.W. Bush 10%
1992 Bill Clinton 83% George H.W. Bush 10%
1996 Bill Clinton 84% Bob Dole 12%
2000 Al Gore 90% George W. Bush 9%
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicsele ctions/nation/president/2004-10-19-kerry -black-vote_x.htm
Most black Americans are not upper middle class. We are working class, blue collar and service workers. We have been solid party loyalists at a time when other Americans have voted for those candidates who have gotten us into war and the mess in our economy.
Yes, there are some black Republicans. My grandfather was one - who clung to the "Party of Lincoln" and wouldn't budge.
But the overwhelming majority of us, though a minority in the US population, have been a solid backbone for Democratic candidates.
No Democrat, of any color, has ever complained about this - in fact we have been applauded. But now that we seem to have shifted our support during the primary season - from one Democrat to another, I am saddened and angered that it seems we are no longer a group who counts, and in fact have been castigated for a voting pattern that has been there since we won the rights to vote again, nationally, after a long struggle in the South.
We are not "blue collar" it seems. We certainly aren't "eggheads" and or "elitists". We are simply "blacks", who have supported Democrat Barack Obama in the same percentages we have supported other Democrats.
But our ultimate choice of Obama - which was not there from the beginning of the primary season, is now and indictment against us. Were we racist when we supported Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton and Gore? No.
Was our vote courted during those times? Yes. Senator Clinton, in recent statements has now redefined who working people are - it seems that they are "white". Senator Clinton has defined that our party cannot win without those now exclusive owners of blue collars. Senator Clinton's statements that somehow white+blue collar+ hard-working+American equals victory for OUR party in the fall.
So what are we to do? Allow ourselves to be portrayed as not hard working and not American? We have been here far longer than almost any group of people in the US. I can trace the part of my family that is black back to the 1600's. I have ancestors - black and white, who fought in the American Revolution, the Spanish American War, the Civil War, WWI and II, and Korea. My dad was a Tuskegee Airman. I lost several cousins in Vietnam and other family members serve in Iraq.
My family that is of African ancestry have worked hard for all these generations. First as slaves, then as railroad workers, teachers, doctors, mechanics, miners, steel workers and farmers.
We have not been on welfare, and the only "welfare" my family has taken EVER was the welfare of the GI Bill, which built the current middle class.
I participated in voting rights registration in the South, along with white schoolmates from the North. Some died during that movement. But we won, and ensured the development of this formidable "block" of Democrats which has made our Party strong.
Now, am I to sit idly by, and allow a Democrat to simply imply that we are irrelevant to the Party, and not the "block" of choice based on her current strategy to somehow win the nomination, and to infer that we are of no import in the General Election ahead?
I say no.
I ask now for other Democrats, of whatever color, social class, or religion, to please speak out about this. This is wrong.
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