The Republicans have been amazingly and overtly disrespectful to the first black president. And his wife. And they have refused to denounce the most shocking and shameful antics of their followers, for the most part.
These two things alone send a very loud, and very clear message to people of colour, I think.
This is sort of true, but it goes back further than the 1960s.
Blacks began to embrace the Democratic Party in significant numbers nationwide during the Franklin Roosevelt presidency. In places where blacks could vote (very few blacks were registered in most Southern states, due to Jim Crow laws and extra-legal violence) they began to move away from the party of Lincoln, which they had embraced since the Civil War, and vote for the New Deal.
Black support for FDR and the Dems was not uncritical, and many black leaders criticized the way that Roosevelt gave in to pressure from Southern Democrats on measures like Social Security, where the lack of coverage for agricultural and domestic workers disproportionately affected African Americans. There was racial and sexual discrimination in other areas of New Deal policy as well. But blacks supported him for his efforts to help the poor and working classes, and Eleanor Roosevelt often pressured Franklin to pay more attention to issues such as lynching, and to meet with black leaders in Washington.
WWII saw Roosevelt, under significant pressure and partially against his own inclinations, accede to some of the demands of the “Double V” movement that called for victory over racial discrimination in America as part of the global victory over fascism. He created the Fair Employment Practices Commission, which helped secure fair(er) treatments for blacks and other minorities in wartime industry.
The post-WWII period also pushed more blacks away from the Republicans and into the arms of the Democrats, with late-1940s developments such as Truman’s Executive Order desegregating the armed forces and his Presidential Commission on Human Rights leading to a growing identification with the Democratic Party as the party of civil rights on the national level.
Not all Democrats liked this development, of course, and the Dixiecrat revolt of the late 1940s presaged the later, and much larger, exodus of Southern whites from the Democratic Party during the era of MLK and LBJ. The Civil Rights Act might have put the final nail in the coffin of the Democratic “Solid South” (LBJ acknowledged as much when he signed it into law) but the construction of the coffin had been under way for some time.
African Americans were courted during the FDR administration as noted, and then in the 1948 Hubert Humphrey called for the Democratic Party to support civil rights for minorities and reject the Dixiecrat concept of segregation. It took a long time before the Democrats actually moved decisively in that direction. Kennedy proposed civil rights legislation shortly before his death and LBJ carried it forward. The 1964 Civil Rights Act only passed with the help of key Republicans, the Democrats were still encumbered with Southern politicians who opposed it. The act was the final straw for many southern democrats, notably George Wallace. At the same time Nixon’s Southern Strategy appealed to the now disaffected Southern Democrats. By the 70s African American support for the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln had eroded away.
Other people have alluded to this, but let me state it explicitly:
People are not just their race or orientation.
Yes, Republicans have opposed same-sex marriage and job protection for LGBT candidates. But if you’re gay, run your own business, and not planning on getting hitched, you might care a lot more about the tax policy than the marriage policy.
Yes, Republicans have said many things about immigration that’s leveled at Hispanics. But if you’re a citizen, you might care a lot more about having a strong military than a liberal immigration policy.
I don’t hear Asians come up in political rhetoric often (then again, I am not Asian), so I imagine they focus on non-racial aspects of the campaigns to decide who to support.
Treating all members of one racial or social block as the same is as silly as assuming George Soros must be a liberal because he’s rich and white.
This makes sense in a world other than our own Earth.
However, here on that Earth the Republicans consistently promulgate policies that are specifically targeted at minorities. The voter rights acts that are being struck down by courts are targeted at keeping minorities from voting. The immigration policies that are geared at attacking Hispanics. The laws and rhetoric that tell gays they are less than human. The anti-abortion and anti-women’s health bills that are based on religious babble. All those are specific and they are telling.
Do the Republicans have any general policies that would overcome those specifics? No. Their economic policies are based on fantasy. They don’t work. Look at Kansas. Their foreign policy is horrifying. Their anti-government stance is stupidly anti-productive.
They do in fact treat members of one race or social block as enemies and inferiors, deliberately and loudly. They do cater to white straight Christians as if they were a single block of voters. They offer nothing to counter this. The natural result is that Republicans have steadily been alienating large segments of the population, and relying upon their base to vote in larger numbers to make up for that. They’ve hit the end point of that strategy.
Other groups haven’t faced quite the same barriers to joining the middle class that African Americans have. The Republican Party until about the 1930s had been known as the more progressive party, and before FDR and Truman, Teddy Roosevelt was probably the strongest advocate of equal rights and protection under the law. The split among democrats started in the 1930s with African Americans having achieved greater economic progress under FDR and then Truman integrated the military. Goldwater and Nixon went after disillusioned Southern Democrats essentially beginning the permanent flip that turned blue states red.
As I’ve told other republicans, if they could just go a little easy on the dog whistle stuff, they’d probably dominate American politics. Large numbers of Blacks are religious and socially conservative. Large numbers of immigrants from Latin America are anti-abortion Catholics. Large numbers of Asians believe in strong families and discipline. If republicans could speak to what they have in common with these people, my God, they’d probably win every election in the foreseeable future. But as long as they believe in their Hocus Pocus economics and insist that if they’re poor they deserve it and that if they’re white and poor it’s probably because brown people are taking jobs and tax dollars from them, they’re not gonna win shit. And they don’t deserve to.
Problem is it will take a few cycles to rebrand and rebuild and they lose base turnout in the process. This election may convince them to do it but it’s been a hard sell.
We just saw the republican base say in no uncertain terms they love explicit racism. The non dog whistle republicans got primaried out over the last 20 years.
Going easy on the dog whistle stuff would mean completely remaking the party. Currently they can’t win anything without the dog-whistle listeners.
Good responses.
To add to what I was saying earlier, I think there has been the opportunity for a kind of political Manhattan Project, an opportunity for both parties to capture the mainstream and own it. I think both parties have been too partisan to seize it, but the Democrats are now in a position to make a move and Hillary in some ways is actually best poised to unify different segments of the population, even as divisive a personality as she is. She could mandate a $12-15/hr minimum wage, add liberal justices, raise taxes, and strengthen the taxes on one hand while buffering Wall St from the partisans on the left.
Yeah, the party is pretty much racism and Christianity, there’s not much more to it than that.
Latin American Catholicism is of a strong Marian bent, being deeply invested in ideas like compassion for the poor, sick and needy. An expectation for the government to actively provide for the needs of the poor runs strong through Latin American culture and religion is a big part of that. Obviously this is also a major platform for Pope Francis. Compassion for others is also reflected in views on immigration where, needless to say, calling people rapists, drug mules and murderers doesn’t get a lot of traction.
Furthermore, a plurality of American Hispanics now agree with same sex marriage. Abortion is basically the only thing left Republicans have to offer Latin American Catholics on ideological grounds. Conservatives cling to it as the magic thing that’ll turn the Hispanic vote around but I don’t see it. Too much other stuff in the way.
Because they like all the free stuff Dems always promise them.
There’s tax cuts. Can’t forget those.
Equality, justice, respect, opportunity, rights, voting, and things like that.
And even on abortion, I bet the Conservatives could only count on the majority of Hispanic Catholic men. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Hispanic Catholic women’s vote is split on the issue.
Because Republicans say shit like this.
Blacks are the most discriminated against group in America in terms of how discrimination affects their daily lives and their prospects. So a party that seems to be against them is going to be a bigger problem for them then it would be for Latinos, Asians, or even gays.
Blacks are poorer than any other group, although this doesn’t explain everything since even the black middle class is overwhelmingly Democrat, whereas Latinos are much more likely to be Republican as their income rises. But African-American voters tend to be more “sticky”, staying Democratic even as they become wealthier.
Unique to African-Americans, the federal government is seen as the good guy and state governments the bad guys. The federal party is always going to beat the states rights party among that group. Latinos, Asians and gays don’t have that same history of the federal government looking out for their interests better than the states. In fact, Asians and gays can probably point to the states they’ve lived in as better for their interests than the feds. So they are more receptive to Republican ideas in that regard.
Identity. It takes a lot more bravery to be a black Republican than it does to be a Latino, Asian, or gay Republican. Your very identity is questioned. I have never seen a truly liberal African-American except on TV. Average African-Americans have a fairly moderate outlook. Whenever there’s a liberal insurgent candidate, they almost never support that candidate. They always prefer the more mainstream Democrats. Which is why I’m not too concerned about Democrats moving left as demographics move more in their favor. A Democratic Party run primarily by the Latino and African-American base is a moderate party, probably even a little to the right of where it is today.
Neither Cruz nor Rubio seem to have gotten the memo (Cruz’ non-endorsement notwithstanding), or noticed that when he says “Mexicans”, he’s also lumping together anybody with a Hispanic last name.
And your second paragraph is closely related to the first and to separation of Church and State. You know, “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s”.
I was recently watching a video by a political analyst talking about “how come Spain doesn’t have something along the lines of UKIP” and “Catholicism” was listed as one of the reasons. Specifically, those compassionate views. Many of our Muslim immigrants are people who didn’t feel comfortable back home (putting it mildly without needing to be in an extreme a situation as that of warzone refugees), it would be uncharitable to tell someone “oh, you’re a leftist/gay/a woman who wants to have a job so your government looks at you funny, so you want to come here? Tough titty!”
