First I AM NOT DEFENDING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. I just think that the idea of democrats using welfare as a means of controlling the black community doesn't make sense politically.
From what I understand historically up until the 60s, Democrats have tried to either keeps blacks from voting or suppress the black vote. This seems to be out of the sense that democratic whites felt that blacks just should not be able to do shit that white men can do.
Republicans historically up until the 60s have advocated for blacks to vote and be treated as full citizens (the sincerity of that is debatable but that isn't whats being discussed here).
Black people loyally supported republicans up to about the 40s but shifted to democrats from that time to now.
I'm in a debate with someone over why blacks loyally vote democrat even tho the history of both parties suggest that republicans up until recently made more overtures to the black community in terms of legislation and rights...
And by far the most enduring indictment against the dems is that they use welfare and "handouts" as leverage for black compliance and vote. And they cite LBJ as his quote: "I’ll have those ******* voting Democratic for the next 200 years." as evidence of this.
LBJ also was recorded saying:“These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don’t move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there’ll be no way of stopping them, we’ll lose the filibuster and there’ll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again.”
but in BOTH instances LBJ was talking civil rights legislation for blacks not welfare. In fact this was written about johnson's thoughts on welfare in general:
"The problem was that Johnson hated welfare. "You tell Shriver no doles," he said to Bill Moyers early in 1964. On Johnson's instructions the economist Lester Thurow, then on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers, was given the task of going through the annual Economic Report of the President and removing anything that could be construed as a reference to putting cash in the hands of poor people. One year the White House staff succeeded in slipping into the annual presidential budget message a promise to extend welfare benefits to families with unemployed fathers, which was supposed to be the way to make sure that welfare wouldn't break up families; Johnson refused to follow through, because he saw it as more welfare. (This change will finally take place in October, 1990, as one of the provisions of the major welfare-reform law that Congress passed last fall.) In 1968 he appointed a presidential commission on income maintenance, but nothing ultimately came of its work. All through the Johnson Administration a welfare solution to poverty (except poverty among elderly people on Social Security) was not a serious option, because of Johnson himself. And in this one instance Robert Kennedy was never willing to embrace the liberal anti-Johnson position, because he, too, was against welfare, and resisted the entreaties of his staff and of Martin Luther King, among others, to endorse a guaranteed income."
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/poverty/lemunf2.htm
So the contention of republicans who try to reconcile why blacks vote democrat is because of LBJ's Great Society program that was SUPPOSEDLY in part designed to keep blacks complacent and voting democrat (hence the "200 years" line) but that just doesn't add up.
I AM NOT DEFENDING JOHNSON AT ALL. I'm just pointing out that the concept just doesn't make sense. And that leads me to the question:
JUST HOW IMPORTANT HAS AND IS THE BLACK VOTE TO EITHER PARTY IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS???
It makes no sense that democrats who have historically hated and fought against blacks having rights tooth and nail and LBJ who clearly didn't like blacks and hated welfare..would devise a program that allocates million upon millions (BILLIONS over 50 years) all to a group that politically is only MARGINALLY important.
In the last 50 years since LBJ the last democrat elected there have been 5 republican and 3 democrat presidents. There are currently 29 Republicans and 20 Democrats who are governors. Clearly the republican party has found ways to win major elections without the black vote. Its so important that the republican party (the same party that fought so hard to make sure blacks got the right) ceded it with no problem. In THIS election the black vote isn't a factor since its already assumed Obama will get 95% of that vote and the polling is STILL tied.
So the idea that democrats use welfare to keep blacks complacent just doesn't add up.
In the video above at the 7 minute mark the dude says that FDR was instrumental in getting blacks to switch to democrats because of ENTITLEMENTS. What he doesn't mention is that was during the DEPRESSION WHEN EVERY FUCKING BODY NEEDED WELFARE! Welfare was most definitely NOT created with black people in mind nor did they have access to it initially..FDR expanded it to blacks. Now why he did that is up for debate but the idea of it being done so blacks can vote democrat at a time where democrats were actively supporting efforts to suppress blacks seems like a stretch.
Then the dude says something thats completely ridiculous..he says "now at some point the democrats knew the black community was going to rise against them..."
The Black community was going to rise against democrats to do what exactly??Thru out american history whenever blacks clashed with whites in any violent way it usually ended with more death and destruction on the black side. And why would a political party with a history of fostering murder, mayhem and intimidation on blacks as a means of keeping them under control suddenly decide that the best way to win their support is to just give them money..in exchange for a voting bloc that doesn't really make a difference in the grand scheme of things?
none of it adds up.
opinions???
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