(Todd A. Smith)
Baseball icon Jackie Robinson once said something to the effect of why should Democrats do anything to help the Black community when they know they will automatically get the Black vote?
Likewise, why would the Republican Party do anything to help the Black community when they know they will not get the Black vote?
That statement is still profound decades later as the Black community constantly must seek out the politicians and party that will do the most for members of an oppressed demographic.
However, critics of the Democratic Party are completely ignorant to compare the Democratic Party to a plantation because at the slave plantation Black people had no rights.
At the plantation, the welfare of Black people was put behind the welfare of White people and animals to be honest.
And when Black people got out of line, they often faced the ultimate punishment, which was death or beaten to the point where they wished death would come and rescue them from their predicament.
On the plantation, families often got separated and displaced much like how migrants got separated from their families during the administration of former President Donald Trump.
In the current iteration of the Republican Party, anything that champions equality for Black and Brown people is met with the term woke.
Programs that championed diversity have gotten shut down because equity and inclusion is not in the best interest of the White community.
Under Republican leadership, history is rewritten to make it look like the White man is sinless, and Black people have somehow benefitted from slavery, Jim Crow and all other forms of bigotry and White supremacy.
Back on the plantation, Black history was rewritten by the White slaveowner so that Black people would think that their predicament in America was much better than it would be if they were still in Africa living like beasts and savages.
However, in actuality, Black people descended from African queens and kings and were not in need of a better life under the control of the White man.
Under the current conservative movement, if a person of color or woman gets a coveted job, it must be because the standards were lowered in the name of inclusion, as if anyone that is not a White man is somehow inferior and not qualified for a good job.
In the current Republican Party, just like on the plantation, they have house Negroes to do the dirty work of the racist White man.
Those house Negroes co-sign racism just so they can get the approval of their beloved “massa,” in this case former President Trump.
The house Negro would sabotage his own livelihood, and that of his own people, just to hear “massa” say, “good boy” and give him a much-needed pat on the head.
The house Negro traded self-worth for White approval.
And that is what many current Black Republican lawmakers like Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Rep. Byron Daniels (R-Fla.) and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) represent as they do the bidding of Trump and the rest of the new racist Republican establishment to the detriment of their own community and what will eventually end up being to the detriment of their own political career.
While the Democratic Party is nowhere near perfect when it comes to race relations, it is light years ahead of the GOP because it seems that Black Democratic lawmakers have an extreme amount of power and sway within the party.
In 2020, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a Black man, changed the course of the presidential race when he endorsed President Joe Biden during the Democratic Party primary.
President Biden then rode a wave of Black support to become the 46th President of the United States.
While the Democratic Party has given America the first Black president and the first woman vice president, the current Grand Ole Party (GOP) wants to desperately go back to the old days when people of color and women knew their place in society.
And that place was not a place of power, but a place of subservience like on an old antebellum plantation in Mississippi, Florida or Georgia.
When abolitionists wanted to move the country forward when it came to the treatment of the Black population, plantation owners, and some that could not even afford slaves in the first place, used secession and violence to maintain the status quo.
The current Republican Party has leaders like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) who preach secession for states that disagree with Biden’s immigration policies.
Furthermore, the modern GOP has a presidential nominee who has said that the country will experience a bloodbath if he does not win the 2024 presidential election.
Furthermore, the current conservative movement has White nationalist leaders that have alluded to war if their preferred presidential candidate does not regain the White House.
But somehow, some house Negroes have the nerve to call the Democratic Party a plantation, not the modern Republican Party.
Negroes, please!
Maybe those that call for Black voters to get off the Democratic plantation say that because they do not want the Black community to be shackled, or too loyal, to the Democratic Party and venture off to see if the grass is greener on the other side.
But maybe the Black community stays overwhelmingly committed to the Democratic Party because its grass is not all green, meaning not just one dominant color.
The grass has some brown spots, and all colors in between.
And although the grass might not always look good by others’ standards, the fact that they are included with all other shades makes it a more desirable place for Black voters to set up shop.
