Still Slaves To Their Own - America’s Black Pharoahs

Tim Rollins Photo courtesy of Beth Rollins

There are many things I have to wonder about America, and one of them has to be the bloc voting I see in particular groups of Americans. For example, labor unions provide volunteers to work the phone banks for liberal candidates and encourage their rank and file to vote for the candidate the group has endorsed. In many cases, the union members vote for the person, and in some cases, they don’t. After all, this is a free society where we vote by secret ballot. This is part of freedom of expression and such is part of America as we have known it from its humble beginnings.

While studying the groups of people who vote, whether they are white men, women, young people or seniors, I find that to each group there is somewhat of diversity in their voting patterns. However, of all the groups of people in our great land, the one group that defies this variety of voting patterns seems to be Black America. They have voted for the liberal Democrat as far back as the administration and ascendancy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Part of this can be that there unfortunately exist a disproportionately high number of blacks (mostly men) that are disenfranchised and thus ineligible to vote due to felony convictions and they have not as yet had their civil rights restored. Black America makes up about 11 percent of the total population of the country, but cast their votes for liberal Democrats at a substantially higher rate than the rest of the population as a whole. This requires a closer look.

We begin with the issue of the politicians themselves. Most politicians and hopefuls know that to get elected, they need to be able to promise voters an abundance of money into their districts, whether it is in the form of jobs, social assistance or special projects. For most of his 27-year career in politics, former Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry functioned as he envisioned himself - as a modern-day Robin Hood, taxing the rich and giving to the poor. None of his administrations made a sincere effort to help those on welfare get off assistance and make them self-reliant. When he needed more money for those on welfare, he just raised taxes again and again. White flight occurred, businesses moved out of the city to escape the taxes, and except for Georgetown, not much else of the city was safe for nighttime travel.

As for Barry himself: He has a charisma factor that makes Bill Clinton look like a dweeb. After all, whereas Clinton was acquitted in his impeachment trial just under two years ago, Barry was caught on tape snorting nose candy on "Candid Camera" at the Vista Hotel, was convicted, did a stretch at Club Fed, and still got himself reelected to a fourth term as Mayor after he got out. However, that was about when his luck ran out. Congress, in an effort to keep Washington from imploding from the first-class pillaging Barry and his pals had done over the years, stripped Barry of nearly all his power, thus making him an $87,000 a year eunuch. It was at that point that Barry saw the writing on the wall and left elected office altogether a short time later.

From Marion Barry, we move on to the Reverend Al Sharpton of New York. Sharpton’s main talent seems to be race baiting. His name came to prominence a number of years ago when a young woman named Tawana Brawley claimed that she had been raped by some white cops in the NYPD. The FBI came into the case as allegations had been made against cops, and an outside investigation was the most appropriate avenue for a resolution to what became a racial powder keg. When she made a public admission that said rape never occurred, just about all hell broke loose. For those who have not been to New York, the place can often be a tinderbox just waiting for some moron to pour some fuel on it and the moron of that day just happened to be Sharpton. Despite Brawley’s later recanting of the incident, Sharpton stayed on his soapbox solely in an effort to raise his profile.

Lest we forget, we also have the Reverend Jesse Jackson to contend with. You remember him, don’t you? He was the guy that called Jews "hymies" and New York "hymietown" a number of years back. He first started preaching about responsibility and self-reliance and for a time worked with the Reverend Martin Luther King. Yet ever since King died, Jackson has been trying to ride King’s coattails for all they’re worth. His positive message continued to be taught until he decided to become a political animal – at that point, he prostituted himself to the Democrats and in the process, lost all credibility whatsoever as a man of the cloth. Since that time, he has done nothing but preach racial divisiveness and repeatedly called for increased welfare assistance for blacks, which thus keeps them enslaved to the federal government. Such a move keeps millions of Americans from achieving self-empowerment and freeing themselves from the yoke by which they are now bound.

Perhaps the largest and most well known symbol of racial hatred and bigotry in America today is the Reverend Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam in Chicago. For years, Farrakhan taught that the Jews were the enemy, yet it was Jews who were working side-by-side with blacks in the South during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960’s. It was Jews working with blacks whose actions helped bring about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that President Lyndon Johnson signed into law. For many years these two groups have been oppressed minorities that were working together until Farrakhan injected his poison of hatred into the dynamic – things have not been the same since, and the damage will take a long time to repair if it can be fixed at all. A closer look at these people will find that there are indeed modern-day pharaohs among them that seem to be leading Black America down the garden path.

By no means do I seek to place the blame for Black America’s problems solely on these men or others like Congresswoman Maxine Walters (D-CA), who has been guilty of race baiting in her own right. The fact of the matter is that there is enough blame to go around for White America too. However, it is the efforts of these men, as well as Maxine Waters and others of her stripe that allow for the subjugation of their own people. These federal entitlement programs keep the government empowered over them with themselves as the taskmasters. One of the most destructive of these government programs is that of affirmative action. This was a program designed to level the playing field between whites and minorities and what it has become in effect, is nothing more than Jim Crow laws dressed up as 20th Century liberalism. It says that in effect, the black man cannot achieve at the white man’s level, and thus he needs artificial assistance.

These so-called leaders propagate the myth that the black man cannot succeed in America today because the system is unfairly stacked against him. For example, they say that whites will not hire blacks or pay them less if they do, and that the white man is trying to keep the black man in poverty - this, despite the fact that there is a burgeoning black middle class. The fact that blacks are starting to succeed constitutes a threat to these people. Their lives have been defined by the cause they have been crusading for. When they see the problem being solved, it threatens what gives their lives meaning and thus they turn up the rhetoric in an effort to renew the flames of prejudice and thus stall any real progress.

What these people fail to remember it seems, is that the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution put an end to slavery in 1865, and while there remains much work that needs to be done in reaching a more fair and equitable system for all Americans regardless of their color, national origin or whatever, they are not serving their own people any by advancing their repressive agendas in the name of self-promotion.

What Black America needs are real leaders of high profile who can truly make a difference, not self-aggrandizing charlatans who cloak themselves in a cause. There will always be problems or inequities in life. Whatever causes you may be pursuing in the name of justice or whatever else, allow it to be solved and move on to the next one. There are no happy endings, just new battles.

• Photo of Al Sharpton courtesy of Africana.com
• Photo of Jesse Jackson courtesy of Rainbow Coalition
• Photo of Louis Farrakhan courtesy of Nation of Islam

Copyright © 2000 by Timothy Rollins.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission