Beware of those who might feign sympathy or pity on you because they want power over you.
Martin Luther King Jr., in his famous speech, had a vision that was, for a long time, woven into the American psyche: “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” However, the evolution of the relationship between the sons has been marked by complexity and adversity.
Since its establishment in January 1828, the Democrat party was the Party of Slavery, governed by Plato’s philosophy that it was right for the ‘better’ to rule over the ‘inferior.’
Neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor the ravages of the Civil War changed the slave owners’ moral convictions. Although the war had settled that blacks were human beings with souls—hence, eligible not just for physical freedom but also for constitutional equality—the Democrats would not allow the former slaves to get too far from their plantations.
For almost one hundred years after the war ended, all the Democrat party’s efforts would be devoted to elaborate political maneuvers to forestall the nightmarish scenario of blacks voting. Since the Republican Party was formed to abolish slavery and was the driving force behind liberating slaves, blacks were expected to vote overwhelmingly for Republicans.
At a moment of greatest weakness, the Democrat-dominated state legislatures passed the Black Codes, followed by Jim Crow laws that enacted racial segregation and a host of discriminatory measures that prevented the former slaves from voting. As Alabama Governor George Wallace Jr., infamously proclaimed in 1963, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” There was no need for any other political or moral justification.
However, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s made it abundantly clear, even to the most zealous racists in the leadership of the Democratic Party, that segregation had run its course. In a 180-degree turn, the Democrats, unembarrassed by the reversal of their previous position, launched themselves on the road to a new approach.
Their newfound conviction was that if they had to let blacks into the voting booth, they needed to create a political process ensuring that blacks would vote Democrat forever. The emphasis began to shift toward dependence. A slave doesn’t necessarily have to work on a plantation to have his existence dependent on a slave owner. Government entitlements would have the same effect of dependence on the sons of slaves as slavery had on their fathers.
Continued…
Approved ~ MJM
