Black, Female and Republican - Is it possible? Part 1

The end of August is here.  And if you are a geek like me, you know that on even years every 4 years the month of August will bring you two events that will prove just how much of a geek you are, the Summer Olympics and the National Political Conventions for both parties where they nominate their candidate for President of the United States.  I am a proud political junkie and for me the conventions are like the Olympics of politics.  Yes, I watch both party conventions.  Yes, I get angry and curse my TV through the first one and jump up and down with excitement at the other.  In case you didn’t know, I am a registered Democrat.  I am a supporter of the policies of the Democratic Party and I have LONG been a supporter of President Barack Obama going back as far as 2005 when I read his first book, “Dreams from my Father.”    For me, all this talk about Presidential politics is equivalent to the Superbowl with all its excitement and emotional ups and downs.  I say all that to say, before you get too far into this post, understand that I am supporting Barack Obama for re-election and there isn’t one thing Mitt Romney could say that would change that.  If you have ever read a post from me, you know I like full disclosure, don’t want to startle you in the following paragraphs when I go IN on the current state of politics and lean extremely hard on the Republican Party. 

My father became a republican at some point in his adult life.  I didn’t realize he was a republican until I was about 15.  I was startled by this.  He had been the one who planted the seeds in my mind of political activism, awareness and insight.  He was the one who gave me the real lessons on race and politics in this country that my teachers wouldn’t include in their lessons plans.  But on the day he told me that he was against Affirmative Action and that he voted for Ronald Reagan, a small piece of my heart died.  My father was my hero in this realm.  There was not a man better read on the topics of politics and history.  I still believe that I will be hard pressed to meet a man who is smarter than he.  Imagine my disappointment.  He argued that Black people shouldn’t rely on hand outs to get ahead in the work place.  He argued that Affirmative Action was detrimental to Black people because it discouraged hard work.  He really believed that if we all worked hard, we can get there (wherever “there” is).  He was against all social programs he believed Black people used and abused to their detriment and he was socially conservative as it relates to family planning.  As I lashed out my anger over his political affiliation, I believed it was his love of guns and belief in legal gun rights that drove his republican party membership.  I mean he moved to Pennsylvania, retired early and made his life all about hunting, fishing and going to the gun range.  I thought it was ridiculous to join a party strictly for its support of your hobbies.  It was in fact his tremendous belief in racial pride that led my father to the Republican Party, a fact I didn’t realize until right before his death in June 2008 when he confessed that he was planning to vote for Barack Obama.  

I am conservative about a lot of things.  Let my sister tell you, I am in fact conservative, period.  And while my all knowing sister is correct in her assessment, one part is missing.  I am conservative in my personal life and in the standards I hold myself to.  But my race and gender breed conflict for me as it relates to being conservative in my political beliefs.  I will never be able to understand how anyone who is not a rich white male can be a supporter of current Republican Party.  This is the party of Ronald Reagan, a President who ignored AIDS as it came to prominence because it impacted the Gay community, a group of people he deemed unimportant and immoral.  I argue he bears responsibility for the epidemic HIV/AIDS has become in this country.  This is the party of Ronald Reagan who decided that a war on drugs was not one where you stop drugs from coming into this country but rather a war where you impose increased incarceration of those who use/sell drugs – a policy that disproportionally impacted urban communities and people of color.  I could go on forever about mass incarceration, fear mongering and aggressive policing of neighborhoods of color and its impacts on the black family, but that is its own blog within its self.   This is the same party that increased resources into policing while decreased resources in public education yet deny the link between lack of quality education and increases in crime.  This is the party of Ronald Reagan that focused on cutting social programs during a recession and then demonized the poor in favor of the idealization of the rich.  Poor people were poor because they didn’t work as hard as the responsible rich.  Poor people were penalized for being poor.  This is the party of Ronald Reagan and trickledown economics, a policy that did not work, ever!  This is the party of racial resentment that spews lies to White working class Americans making them believe that it is blacks and other brown people who are laying around using up all the tax dollars of the hard working white folks because they are sitting on their asses having babies and cashing welfare checks.  Yet this is also the party who supports overturning Roe vs. Wade, making abortion illegal in this country.  I wonder how they plan to support all those extra babies that will be born after they cut both Abortion and all the social programs.    I am a woman.  I am black.  How can I support a party that supports policy and agendas that are clearly attcacking those who are of my gender and my race?  How can I support a party that is in favor of policies in opposition of the lifestyle choices of other minority groups?  How can I support a party who claims to be the party of morals and family values yet is in opposition of supporting the poor (which is a moral obligation in my opinion) and in favor of the death penalty (which also disproportionately impacts men of color)? No matter how conservative I may be in my personal life, unlike my Dad, I cannot separate from my gender and my race.  Does that make my thinking too broad or too narrow? 

This is where I start.  More to come…

Comments please!