By Arthur Fleming
What is politics? Politics refers to the activities associated with the governance of a country or other areas, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.
What is Moral Authority? Moral is authority premised on principles or fundamental truths, which are independent of written or positive laws.
Democratic and Republicans party relationships with the African American communities in general has been a thorny affair.
The Democratic Party was the party of Jim Crow after 1865, called the “Dixiecrats,” while the Democratic Party of The New Deal under Franklin D. Roosevelt in the nineteen forties created a political demographic shift in the African American communities throughout the south.
The Republican Party of the nineteen forties was the party of Lincoln, who led the Civil War that helped free enslaved African Americans.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt New Deal made political inroads into the African American communities through military integration, Social Security, WPA work programs, etc, along with the “collective intellectual intelligence” of the African American leadership of that time.
The political shift of the African American intellectual infrastructure, from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, created a political realignment that led to Brown v. Board of education, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Right Act, Affirmative Action, etc.
It was in the nineteen forties that African American communities shifted, placing its future political and social advancement hopes in the New Deal Democratic Party.
The African American communities have made progress in a lot of areas since the nineteen forties by supporting the Democratic Party; however, the Democratic Party and our African American political class has failed to aggressively protect our “voting rights,“ and at times joined the Republican Party, creating policies that were not in the long-term interest of the African American communities. See “war on drugs.“
Since the social and political realignment of the nineteen forties, fifties, sixties and seventies, the African American communities have suffered pushback from the Republicans Party in particular. The Republican Party has introduced theories like “reverse discrimination,“ welfare queens, Willie Horton, war on drugs, Critical Race Theory and more.
The fact that white Americans have had over four hundred years of affirmative action and are now introducing reverse discrimination claims in cable TV ads is an affront to all who traveled the African American diaspora. And guess who was the biggest benefactor of Affirmative Action? White women.
The fascist pushback by the Republican Party started in the nineteen seventies with Governor Ronald Reagan of California. Reagan kicked off his Presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights activists were killed for education, and voter registration of Mississippi African American communities in the nineteen sixties.
In 1985, President Reagan with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, went to Bitburg Germany cemetery and laid a Rief at the gravesite of the “Nazi SS.“ The symbolic act at the Bitburg cemetery invited the Nazi elements of the American Southern Confederate States into mainstream Republican Party politics and created the global fascist infrastructure we see today.
What are the African American political class responsibilities to the African American communities in this American fascist moment?
The African American political class in many ways has been captured or corporatized by the current “money is speech political system.”
Today “The Supreme Capitalist Corporations” are people too, our system operates on a pay to play basis, so how can the African American political class maintain its character, integrity and moral authority, while representing our collective African American community’s character, integrity and moral authority for the community good.
We say to our African American politicians “don’t sellout.“ By sellout, I simply mean to operate without moral authority or political integrity. By Integrity, I mean doing the right thing when no one is watching. What can our African American political class do in this age of revealing? Don’t sellout.
It has come to my attention that Texas State Representatives voted 95-53 to remove books from our school libraries, while eleven Democrats voted for this bill.
The Black Caucus (except Carl Sherman, D-Desoto, who voted for the book ban bill) held strong by voting nay. A serious African American, Hispanic and white democratic coalition conversation needs to be had by the Texas Democratic Party political class.
What can grass roots organizations do to maximize our political powers in this moment of fascism in America? Our main political power is the African American block vote.
In Texas, we have the largest number of African Americans (over four million) of any state in the union, and that’s with rigged census data.
This moment of American fascism is an opportunity to develop an African American “independent political base power“ that is independent of both parties and focused on issues of African American concern.
African Americans vote ninety plus percent the same (or block) on issues of concern, regardless of social or economic status. To maximize African American voter impact, communities must increase our overall numbers.
This will have the political impact of empowering the African American political class to demand political and economic power for the community good.
Freedom Riders 2.0 Movement requires the African American political class to act with character, integrity and moral authority, to educate the African American communities about the political urgency in this moment of American fascism, whose goal is the creation of the “oligarchic state,” where the “supreme corporate capitalists” rule.
Texas has largest number of African American voters of any state in the union. The African Americans communities vote in a block consistently. An increased African Americans vote in local, state and national elections will empower the African American voter (independent political base) politically, economically and morally, leading to self-determination and freedoms for the community good. Our young people need to see the African American leaders, elders, and parents, fighting for our African American children.
This is not a drill.
This is real.
Arthur Fleming can be found on Facebook at Dallas Civill Rights Issues group and reached at pflashs@hotmail.com.
