By Star Parker
Monday, June 17, 2013
Anyone who doubts that the Republican Party can attract
black voters needs only look south to Louisiana.
At a conference held in Baton Rouge at the end of May,
called @Large and aimed to attract black conservatives, black Democrat Elbert
Guillary, a member of the state legislature, announced that he was switching
party and becoming a Republican.
Less than two weeks later, just up the road in Central
City, Louisiana, black Democrat city councilman Ralph Washington – who attended
this same @Large conference, made the same announcement – he’s becoming a
Republican.
It’s really not such a mystery. The mystery is why this
is not happening more often.
I’m asked all the time why, when it is so clear that
blacks are damaged by the left wing political agenda, black voters so uniformly
and consistently support candidates – Democrats – who advance this agenda.
My answer is that Republicans need to start acting more
like the businesspeople they claim to be.
Any businessman convinced that his product is the best
doesn't blame customers for not buying it. He doubles down on his efforts to
understand these potential customers better and how to sell to them.
There needs to be more appreciation of the differences in
the black population.
A Gallup poll done in 2011 showed that whereas 39 percent
of whites say they are “very religious,” 53 percent of blacks do. A large
percentage of “very religious” blacks are conservative and very different from
blacks on the left who identify with the NAACP.
The @Large conference, where I was a speaker, was hosted
by pastor C.L. Bryant, who tells his own story about leaving the left-wing
black establishment in his new film “Runaway Slave.”
Bryant was president of the NAACP chapter in Garland,
Texas, but his relationship with the NAACP soured when he refused to speak at a
Planned Parenthood pro-abortion event.
His eyes began to open and see that his traditional
Christian values – protecting the unborn and promoting the traditional family,
individual freedom, and dignity – were out of whack with the political agenda
blacks were automatically signing onto.
Elbert Guillary is now the first black Republican in the
Louisiana state legislature since reconstruction.
Listen to him to understand why a conservative black
leaves the Democratic Party.
He called the Democrats “the party of disappointment” and
expressed disillusionment with Democratic policies on abortion, gun control,
education, and immigration.
Democrats “have moved away from the traditional values of
most Americans,” he said. “Their policies have encouraged high teen birth
rates, high high school drop-out rates, high incarceration rates, and very high
unemployment rates.”
Or listen to now-Republican councilman Washington:
“…the value system I was raised up with, it really
doesn’t side with the Democrats...Some of the things I see happening today,
with the entitlement programs, we have to change. We can’t continue doing the
things we are doing and survive.”
Everyone understands that black American history is
unique and complicated.
But wallowing in the past is never an answer to anyone’s
personal challenges.
The challenge is clarifying right from wrong and acting
accordingly moving forward.
It has always seemed pretty clear to me that traditional
values and personal freedom and responsibility must be the agenda moving
forward for every American of every background.
Black Americans, like every American, need less taxes
taken out of their paychecks, need to be able to choose where to send their
children to school, need to be able to pick freely a health care plan that
suits their needs, and need to save for retirement instead of paying payroll
taxes.
You can’t sum it up any better than what Elbert Guillary
and Ralph Washington have said. There are many, many Guillarys and Washingtons
out there in black America.
We need more efforts like the @Large conference to reach
them.
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