In her July 25, 2008 column in the London Daily Mail, titled, “Princess Obama,” columnist Melanie Phillips speculates that, on Barack Obama’s first foreign trip as the presumptive Democratic nominee, “he achieved the feat of upsetting one of his country’s key allies, the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel.”
Apparently Chancellor Merkel took a dim view of Obama’s plan to hold a political rally at the Brandenburg Gate, in Berlin, where JFK made his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech and where Ronald Reagan threw down the gauntlet to the Soviet Union, saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Because Obama changed his mind and moved his rock concert and campaign rally to Berlin’s Victory Column, Ms. Phillips saw that as evidence of Obama’s ignorance of history, pointing out that the Victory Column was moved to its present location by Adolph Hitler “as a symbol of Germany’s superiority and its victories against Denmark, Austria and France.”
She points out that, for nearly twenty years, Obama attended a church where his pastor preached black power racism against white people, and that he disavowed Jeremiah Wright “only when his extreme views could no longer be ignored…” She asks, “What if John McCain’s pastor and mentor had expressed support for the Ku Klux Klan and his church was found to be sympathetic to its philosophy?” She suggests that McCain’s candidacy would have been immediately “defenestrated.”
Never missing an opportunity to correct someone who might imply, however remotely, that it’s fitting to mention the Ku Klux Klan and a conservative or a Republican in the same sentence… as if conservatives, Republicans, and Klansmen were cut from different parts of the same bolt of cloth… I sent Ms. Phillips an e-mail.
I explained that Europeans could be forgiven if they were unaware that the KKK was founded in 1866 as a paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party. A Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, had freed the slaves and Republicans had sponsored the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, outlawing slavery and giving blacks citizenship and the right to vote. Hence, the purpose of the Klan was to intimidate, oppress, and control black people through extra-legal means since they could no longer be intimidated and oppressed through legal means.
But as I prepared to send the message to Ms. Phillips in London, I asked myself, what has really changed for African Americans, politically and economically, in the past 150 years? Beginning with the end of the Civil War in 1865, the creation of the KKK in 1866, and the adoption of the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, through the dawn of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, Democrats have used every conceivable device… legal and illegal, violent and non-violent… to control and oppress our African American minority.
Following ratification of the 15th Amendment, blacks went to the polls to vote. But when they arrived at the polls Democrats were there to tell them how to vote. And any black man who was bold enough to cross over to the Republican side of the ballot could expect severe repercussions – a job lost, a house burned to the ground, or a noose at the end of a rope.
What did white Democrats want from black people throughout that era… from the 1860s through the 1950s? Not much. They wanted blacks to be docile and subservient, they wanted them poor and dependent, and they wanted them loyal and obedient… especially on Election Day. In exchange, white Democrats would see to it that they had a roof over their heads, food on their table, a modicum of education, and a subsistence wage.
It was thus during 200 years of slavery, and it was thus in the century following emancipation.
But then came Brown vs. Board of Education, Little Rock Central High School, Rosa Parks and the Birmingham bus boycott, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Suddenly the Black Codes and Jim Crow were gone, struck down by the courts, but Democrats still had a need to maintain control over the lives… and the votes… of black people.
It was the black vote, and the black vote alone, that made Democrats competitive, and often dominant, in the political arena. Without the black vote, Democrats would have been a distinct minority in the Congress and in most state legislatures, so they negotiated a devil’s bargain: If African Americans would remain docile and subservient, poor and dependent, loyal and obedient… especially on Election Day… Democrats would see to it that they had a roof over their heads, food on their table, a modicum of education, and a subsistence wage.
Between the close of the Civil War in 1865 and the dawn of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, the instrument of control over the lives of black people was the KKK; in the years since Brown vs. Board of Education the instrument of control has been the social welfare system… the New Frontier and the Great Society. In the old days, Democrats would show up on the front porch with a gun and a rope. In more recent times they’ve shown up on the front porch with a welfare check, food stamps, and an absentee ballot.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s just a kinder, gentler KKK.
