Why Republicans Can’t Reach Out to Black Voters
One of the panel discussions at CPAC last week focused on how the Republican Party could more effectively reach out to minority voters. It featured K. Carl Smith of the Frederick Douglass Republicans, but one of the audience members, who claims to be a descendant of Jefferson Davis, showed exactly why the GOP has such a problem reaching black voters. Watch this video:
ThinkProgress interviewed the guy afterward:
After the exchange, Terry muttered under his breath, “why can’t we just have segregation?” noting the Constitution’s protections for freedom of association…
ThinkProgress spoke with Terry, who sported a Rick Santorum sticker and attended CPAC with a friend who wore a Confederate Flag-emblazoned t-shirt, about his views after the panel. Terry maintained that white people have been “systematically disenfranchised” by federal legislation.
When asked by ThinkProgress if he’d accept a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites, he said “I’d be fine with that.” He also claimed that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa,” and that “all the Tea Parties” were concerned with the same racial problems that he was.
At one point, a woman challenged him on the Republican Party’s roots, to which Terry responded, “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.”
Gosh, I can’t imagine why black and women voters wouldn’t want to associate with that guy, can you?
IslandBrewer:
March 18th, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Holy fucking fuck. How does anyone take these people seriously?
Doug Little:
March 18th, 2013 at 2:01 pm
47% do if the last election is anything to go by.
iknklast:
March 18th, 2013 at 2:03 pm
I would love to hear Robert Ingersoll give these folks a little history lesson on the Republican Party.
schism:
March 18th, 2013 at 2:04 pm
Terry maintained that white people have been “systematically disenfranchised” by federal legislation.
I assume this started after the 2012 election, ’cause I sure didn’t have any trouble voting then.
KathyO:
March 18th, 2013 at 2:10 pm
Finally saw the movie Lincoln. It made me daydream about what life would be like today of we didn’t have the ball-and-chain of the reality-denying, science-spurning, racist ex-confederate states tying us down.
abb3w:
March 18th, 2013 at 2:25 pm
By enfranchising women and minorities, it dilutes the votes of and thus in effect disenfranchises white males? Either that, or he’s just using “disenfranchise” as a phatic signal with meaning on the lines of “I don’t get what I vote for — WAAHHHH”.
Thorne:
March 18th, 2013 at 2:51 pm
I liked the part where the white guy in the audience, when told that Frederick Douglass forgave his former owners, asked: “For what? Given him shelter and food all those years?”
It’s obvious that this man would be quite happy to be forcibly taken from his home in chains, sold to people who speak a different language and forced to perform hard labor. He’d be delighted to have whatever family he might have managed to make taken away from him and sold. Just make sure you feed him, even if it’s the slops that your own family won’t eat, and shelter, even if it is only a broken down old shack with no floors and a leaky roof. Must sound like red-neck heaven to that yahoo!
Gregory in Seattle:
March 18th, 2013 at 2:51 pm
The answer should be obvious: send out the cabal to remind African-Americans how well they had things under slavery.
Reginald Selkirk:
March 18th, 2013 at 2:53 pm
“I studied literature – English literature and stuff…”
ragingapathy:
March 18th, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Reginald –
You didn’t know? Tom Metzger is now in the English Lit canon. Coz he wrote in English, after all.
eoraptor:
March 18th, 2013 at 3:07 pm
The thing that bothers me the most is that I’m only finding out about this by reading Dispatches. This is exactly the kind of stuff the lame-stream media should be putting on the nightly news, so that voters truly can be informed. To be fair, the media should also air any similar Democrat faux pas… even if the ratio of R to D outlandish statements is 1000 to 1.
DaveL:
March 18th, 2013 at 3:11 pm
After 150 years of migration, you’ll find them pretty much everywhere.
chrislrob:
March 18th, 2013 at 3:22 pm
Ed, I beg to differ. The man that black people really don’t want to be associated with is K. Carl Smith. Black conservatives are just a sorry bunch of human beings. And no self-respecting black person has any business in the Republican Party. Join up and it won’t be long before you’ll be like K. Carl Smith, pleading with a racist segregationist to please listen to your side–which apparently doesn’t involve standing against racial segregation–and throwing Frederick Douglass under the bus in the bargain.
Eating shit is simply a job requirement for black Republicans. I always laugh when they say, “The only racism I encounter comes from Democrats and black people!” Yeah. Okay. Whatever.
Later, Smith sat down with a conservative site and said after a few minutes of a good talking to, the segregationist was converted to Frederick Douglass Republicanism–he even bought Smith’s book!–and they departed as friends.
Oh! And he said that the black woman that asked why he equated today’s Democratic Party to the KKK was the disruptive force in the room–not the racist. He said that.
Bah! Too irritated to type more. The GOP sending black Republicans to recruit black people is like a butcher sending lamb chops to recruit sheep.
Alex, the furry little atheist:
March 18th, 2013 at 3:33 pm
If this article is reporting the same thing as the OP, then these people are from my alma mater, Towson University. They are an unrecognized group calling itself the White Student Union (to be “similar” to the Black Student Union and the Queer Student Union). They started out as a branch of the Youth for Western Civilization, but they lost their faculty advisor last year and had to disband. They’ve been causing quite a bit of PR trouble for the university.
Modusoperandi:
March 18th, 2013 at 3:40 pm
It takes a brave man to stand up in the party of scared, aging white people and say “It’s a bit…dark…in here, don’t you think?”
Ben P:
March 18th, 2013 at 3:56 pm
A particular branch of my family (Paternal grandmother’s family) also had a story that they were relatives of Jefferson Davis. I did research on it when I traced my family history in college.
Jefferson Davis had six children. Four of those children died childless before the age of 21. The fifth died childless at age 34. The only child to have children was Margaret Howell. She and her husband moved to Colorado after the civil war and what I found suggested her family stayed there, rather eager to forget that their grandfather was the president of the confederate republic.
So anyone who lives in the deep south and claims to be a direct descendant of Jefferson Davis is either lying or bullshitting and repeating a family story without knowing whether it’s true.
Trebuchet:
March 18th, 2013 at 4:23 pm
Wow! Who says there are no honest Republicans?
Modusoperandi:
March 18th, 2013 at 5:09 pm
Ben P, oh, come on! Have you no pride in your imagined history? Who wouldn’t rush to be on the family tree of a person on the losing end of a bad idea?
thebookofdave:
March 18th, 2013 at 5:47 pm
Looks like their outreach initiative is off to a good start. Conservatives are reaching out to the people in their place.
thebookofdave:
March 18th, 2013 at 5:50 pm
Oops! Edit fail.
Conservatives are reaching out to put people in their place.
davidworthington:
March 18th, 2013 at 6:01 pm
I live–for a few weeks more–about 5 blocks from the house where Jeff Davis died. I walk by there a lot with my 3 dogs, there are 2 big markers there–I encourage my dogs to piss on the markers whenever possible.
Michael Heath:
March 18th, 2013 at 6:42 pm
eoraptor writes:
I suggest skimming/reading the news aggregators Huffington Post (leftist) and The Drudge Report (conservative), along with Andrew Sullivan’s “Daily Dish” blog. I get your point goes beyond yourself, but this will provide you with a broad selection of articles which provides prospective to the ongoing partisan narrative.
democommie:
March 18th, 2013 at 7:09 pm
@21:
“For the tree of treachery must needs be watered with the piss of dogs from time to time…”.?
Rob:
March 18th, 2013 at 7:21 pm
Thorne (7) – I know you were speaking with sarcasm/snark. The sad thing is that that guy would be horrified if that happened to him, but I suspect would be quite relaxed at the prospect of owning a slave or two and downright delighted at having a properly respectful and quiet woman at his beck and call.
Excuse me while I wander off and find something to wash the taste of bile from my mouth.
Tsu Dho Nimh:
March 18th, 2013 at 7:28 pm
@7 ..,. ““For what? Given him shelter and food all those years?””
Douglass “letter of forgiveness” points out that his owner rented him out for $7 to $8 dollars a week (presumably skilled labor) and took all the money. Not just what he owed for room and board, which in the 1830s was way less than that, but took it ALL
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/02/i-am-your-fellow-man-but-not-your-slave.html is the letter. Too bad that Terry didn’t have to study the vocabulary in that. Douglass had a way with words.
atheist:
March 18th, 2013 at 7:36 pm
I don’t really understand this hypocritical new phase of US conservatism. They won’t be able to reach out to many black voters and they don’t even really want to reach out to black voters. I wonder if this is some kind of evil, perverted ritual?
Trebuchet:
March 18th, 2013 at 8:10 pm
That’s only WHITE children. I’d guess there’s a good possibility he fathered a black child or six. Perhaps the CPAC clown comes from one of them….
Marcus Ranum:
March 18th, 2013 at 8:16 pm
They won’t be able to reach out to many black voters and they don’t even really want to reach out to black voters. I wonder if this is some kind of evil, perverted ritual?
They managed to fool the poor whites into supporting the plutocracy against their self-interest. I’m guessing that they figure if they can sell absurd ideas like “hey, fiscal responsibility means shovelling money to the wealthy and not cutting military expenditures – but you should thank us for cutting your social programs!” I mean, seriously, if they can sell that idea, they ought to be able to sell anyone on anything, including the idea that piss is better than beer and giving the wealthy a handout means there’s more money for the poor.
Sometimes I wonder if there’s a committee that meets in a small dark room and looks at the numbers and says “holy shit! they swallowed that, too! let’s tell ‘em liberals are going to make the moon crash into Texas!” And a month later, “holy shit! what next? can we convince them that tar sands are a diet supplement? Let’s try that one and see if it fits through the overton window…”
d.c.wilson:
March 18th, 2013 at 8:39 pm
The least surprising thing for me, as a resident of Pennsylvania, is that this guy is a Santorum supporter.
Marcus Ranum:
March 18th, 2013 at 8:51 pm
Tsu Dho Nimh@#25
Thank you for introducing me to “letters of note” – what a delightful site. I have work assignments due tomorrow and now I know I won’t begin working on them until after I’m done reading and savoring 885 more letters!
Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :):
March 18th, 2013 at 9:24 pm
Well, they’d like to rope a few at least.
F [nucular nyandrothol]:
March 18th, 2013 at 9:42 pm
I can imagine why a two-by-four might want to associate itself with this guy.
aluchko:
March 18th, 2013 at 11:00 pm
I actually wasn’t that concerned with the video, nutjobs will show up at political gatherings and every once in a while a real yahoo will pop up in the audience.
The concerning part was this
“K. Carl Smith [the black speaker in the video] released a statement following the media storm related to the racist outburst in his panel. Astonishingly, he reserves the brunt of his criticism for the female reporter who raised objections to the comments being made in the room:
[...]
In addition, a young man who wasn’t a Tea Party Patriot, made some racially insensitive comments, [...]
At the conclusion of the breakout session, I further explained to him the Frederick Douglass Republican Message which he embraced, bought a book, and we left as friends. ”
A random yahoo in the audience is one thing, but K. Carl Smith had to have some base support to have a role on the panel. For the CPAC environment to be so toxic that a black presenter ends up defending as unabashed a racist as you’re going to get in the 21st century is horrifying.
dingojack:
March 19th, 2013 at 12:14 am
$6 pw in 1835 is worth $3,160 pw in 2010 (in terms of economic status*). or $164,884.29 p.a. Not a bad little earner that, too bad the person actually doing the work wasn’t getting a cent.
GOP: the party of the free market!
:/ Dingo
——–
* economic status is defined as: the relative ‘prestige value’ of an amount of income or wealth using the income index of the per-capita GDP. SOURCE.
Modusoperandi:
March 19th, 2013 at 1:10 am
dingojack “GOP: the party of the free market!”
To be fair, being the South, at that time it would’ve been the Democrats.*
* Because Obama!
dingojack:
March 19th, 2013 at 1:34 am
MO –
yes, but these are the kind of ”markets” the Geriatric Overbearing Parasites will support in a few election cycles*, once they expel those not quite pure enough!
‘Jeff Davis’ zombie-corpse for Prez: GoP 2024‘ (ish).
Dingo
——–
* give ‘em a couple of years and this’ll be the GOP mainstream position, you betcha! [winks]
Lithified Detritus:
March 19th, 2013 at 6:51 am
On the more hopeful side, the look on the face of the young woman in the front row at 2:01is priceless. Maybe some young people raised in the Republican party will figure out what a snakepit it is.
w00dview:
March 19th, 2013 at 11:17 am
Clicked on the video and these were the top two youtube comments:
These were the TOP RATED comments on this video. Post racist society my ass. This shit is depressing.
sc_72717b0d8dc4053e632b6512091cef73:
March 19th, 2013 at 1:22 pm
Seriously…this redneck cracker who studied, “literature and stuff” is proud of his people? The greatest tragedy of the American Civil War is that intelligent, passionate, young people died in order to keep trash like this in the Union. I’m all for putting up a wall to keep the lower orders from corrupting our country…I just think that it should start at the Mason-Dixon line.
Ichthyic:
March 19th, 2013 at 6:56 pm
this isn’t the first time I’ve said this, but it does seem to be the case that a significant portion of Americans would prefer to live in a feudal society, so long as they still had their cars and TV.
Ichthyic:
March 19th, 2013 at 7:01 pm
I’m surprised one of those comments wasn’t from Anty Scalia.
Ichthyic:
March 19th, 2013 at 7:09 pm
no, it is the simple result of empowering authoritarian personalities for multiple generations.
Ichthyic:
March 19th, 2013 at 7:16 pm
oh, and speaking of Scalia…
http://www.quickmeme.com/Scumbag-Scalia/?upcoming
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
March 20th, 2013 at 10:37 am
Finally saw the movie Lincoln. It made me daydream about what life would be like today of we didn’t have the ball-and-chain of the reality-denying, science-spurning, racist ex-confederate states tying us down. – KathyO
The South winning the Civil War is a common them in alternative histories. Usually, it doesn’t turn out too well.
Thorne:
March 20th, 2013 at 2:19 pm
They seem to forget that the feudal system worked wonderfully for the lords and priests. Not so good for the serfs, though. Those pushing for a return to the past always seem to assume that they, of course, will be among the 1% living in the castle, and not the 99% grubbing in the fields.