What the Democrats Won’t Tell You

by | Sep 5, 2012 | Feature, Headline News | 1 comment

NO LOOKING BACK: Democratic delegates and supporters waved “Forward” placards at the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sept. 4, the first day of the 2012 Democratic National Convention. (Photo: Robyn Beck/Newscom)

The contrast in diversity was striking on the screen.

The sea of red, yellow, white, black, and brown faces at the Democratic convention in Charlotte last night compared to the sea of white with black and brown specks at the Republican event last week in Tampa. It’s like watching color TV vs. black and white.

But is it really?

Nowadays we talk about red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) as code for conservative and liberal, but as the Democrats take their turn this week and re-nominate the first African American POTUS, I wonder how many black Democrats know their party’s history is much redder than the GOP when it comes to black people and other minorities. In fact, the DNC’s founding fathers would be red with rage that Barack Obama is the party’s leader.

You certainly wouldn’t know this by viewing the DNC’s website on your computer. The opening paragraph of the African American section reads:

“For decades, Democrats have stood with the African American community in the struggle for equality and the enduring struggle to perfect our nation itself.”

Really?

The section about the party’s history reeks with campaign spin:

“For more than 200 years, our party has led the fight for civil rights, health care, Social Security, workers’ rights, and women’s rights. We are the party of Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy, FDR, and the countless everyday Americans who work each day to build a more perfect union.”

This is followed by a timeline with the entry being 1920.

C’mon now. Your official founding date is 1792, making the Democrats the nation’s oldest political party, yet your timeline begins in 1920? Is it because you are also the party of President Andrew Jackson that promoted the bloody takeover of Indian lands and the expansion of slavery? Is it because you are the party of President Andrew Johnson, the Confederate who during Reconstruction championed laws leading to Jim Crow that re-shackled black freedom for decades after the Civil War?

I was reared in a Democratic household in Brooklyn, New York, to parents who were union loyalists. My initial DNC history reached only as far as FDR and the New Deal. But as I came of voting age I sought the backstory for myself. In a word, it is racist.

The party of Obama had for centuries championed a laundry list of oppressive policies that have led to the tragic disparities and the areas of health, wealth, education, housing, and incarceration rates that continue to plague the African American community today. However, that revelation then didn’t stop me from voting my interest such as, helping David Dinkins to become New York’s first black mayor in 1990.

The truth before 1920 and after is easily accessible via several legit Web sites. Of course Republicans pointed this out themselves in 2008, no doubt as a way of throwing stones at then-Sen. Obama’s magical run for the White House.

What’s curious is why the DNC doesn’t openly embrace its full history — that the party that once championed slavery has produced the nation’s first African American president. Wouldn’t that show how far the party has led nation, though there’s still a ways to go? Wouldn’t that illustrate “change we can believe in,” and progress “forward?” Wouldn’t that show respect for blacks, a constituency that is supposed to be highly valued?  DNC leadership obviously decided on the history revision. Where are the black Democratic leaders on this? Where are the whites who are supposed to be progressive?

For me, it shows that both parties share a common problematic history on the issue of race. One doesn’t want to hear about it, while the other doesn’t want to talk about it. This hasn’t changed much over the years. People have just switched sides and traded names.

Real change would be seeing a sea of colorful faces at both conventions, and two parties focused on meaningful policies rather than spin. I don’t expect it to happen in my lifetime, though.

But then again, I said the same about a black man becoming President of the United States.

Democrats Launch ‘Inclusive’ Convention

by | Sep 4, 2012 | Feature, Headline News |

Following a whirlwind of Republican speeches and surprises in Tampa, the Democrats launch their national convention tonight in Charlotte, North Carolina, with a lineup that includes a musical performance by Ledisi, a tribute to President Jimmy Carter, a speech from First Lady Michelle Obama (along with appearances by her brother Craig Robinson and sister-in-law Maya Soetoro-ng), San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro delivering the first keynote from a Hispanic, an appearance by African Methodist Episcopal  Bishop Vashti McKenzie, and a benediction by Jena Lee Nardella, founder and executive director of Blood: Water Mission.

In a roundup on people praying at the convention, CNN’s religion editor Dan Gilgoff says Nardella is important because she “represents the young evangelical demographic that the Obama campaign is targeting in this election, knowing that older evangelicals are largely locked up for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.” Gilgoff says McKenzie, who prays the invocation on Wednesday, is significant because she is an Obama campaign co-chair and “the first woman elected bishop in the AME Church, the country’s oldest black religious denomination.”

Before the convention even got underway, “thousands of Christians converged in Charlotte on Sunday to repent and pray for revival in the face of what they see as a ‘national crisis,'” The Christian Post reported.

But did they pray for more prose and less poetry?

In an Associated Press op-ed, veteran reporter Michael Oreskes says Romney has the easier task this election season. “He gets to campaign in poetry. But Obama must now explain the governing prose of the last four years,” said Oreskes. Need proof? “The last president to win re-election with unemployment over 8 percent was Franklin D. Roosevelt,” he said.

As to tonight’s historic keynoter Julian Castro, in 2010, he reportedly told The New York Times that affirmative action helped pave the way for the success he and his twin brother ( a Texas state representative) have enjoyed. “Joaquin and I got into Stanford because of affirmative action. I scored 1,210 on my SATs, which was lower than the median matriculating student … But I did fine in college and in law school. So did Joaquin.”

Speaking of inclusion, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told CBN News that the convention “is going to be the most inclusive, participatory, open-to-the-public affair of any presidential nominating convention in history.”

But will it be friendly to conservtive Democrats?

CBN asked Shultz if the DNC’s new party platform affirming same-sex marriage might alienate them. “Applying the law equally — whether you’re talking about marriage or anything else — is not a political issue. It’s a values issue,” said Schultz. She went on to say that religious institutions’ treatment of marriage is “a separate issue.”

What do you think?

What do you want to hear from the Democrats this week?

Correction: The Jimmy Carter video was not a tribute, but videotaped remarks by the former president. PBS commentators reported that Carter was not invited to speak in person at the convention.