by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
"Black Power" has been turned on its head on the electoral front, put at the service of corporatists like Hillary Clinton. "Paralyzed by fear of the White Man's Party, Black voters find a false sense of power in clustering around the perceived 'winners'" on the Democratic Party menu. "The mantra is, effectively, 'All Power to the Democratic Party!'" – brokered, of course, by the Black Misleadership Class.
The Bogus Power of the Black Vote Within the Confines of the Democratic Party
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“The March 1 contests in Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and Tennessee will seal the deal, allowing warped practitioners of Black electoral power politics to claim Hillary owes her nomination to African Americans.”
I can hear it now: “For the third time in this century, Black voters (‘the hands that picked cotton’) are picking a president of the United States.” Such inanities will ring out from every bastion of Democratic Party hegemony in Black America in celebration of Hillary Clinton’s sprint towards coronation as the Third Black President (her husband having purportedly been the first).
Although the young, white Sandernistas may not grasp it yet, their doomed quest to transform the Democratic Party “from below” has failed to move the voting bloc that makes up the actual “bottom” of the party: the bedrock 25 percent that is Black. In South Carolina, Blacks will be a majority of Democratic primary voters on Saturday – a “demographic buzz saw,” as a Washington Post headline put it, with Clinton sweeping all the African American age cohorts.
Although Bernie Sanders garnered 84 percent of Democrats aged 29 and younger in overwhelmingly white New Hampshire, and beat Clinton by 21 percentage points among voters age 30 to 45, he is polling at only 35 percent among Blacks age 45 and under in South Carolina, and losing to Clinton 78 to 12 percent among Blacks over age 45, according to NBC’s numbers.
Entrance-exit polls show Clinton won 76 percent of the Black vote in Nevada. The March 1 contests in Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and Tennessee will seal the deal, allowing warped practitioners of Black electoral power politics to claim Hillary owes her nomination to African Americans.
“They tune Sanders out, because their main purpose for voting in national elections is to keep the White Man’s Party, the Republicans, out of the White House.”
Statistically, they will be correct. But Bernie Sanders, whose domestic politics is a much closer fit with the historical and current Black world view, is not losing to Hillary because of his positions on the issues, or because Blacks trust in Clinton’s honesty and integrity (huge numbers don’t, in every demographic). It is also no longer the case that most Blacks are unfamiliar with Sanders’ platform. African Americans are, by some measures, more tuned in to the “news” than whites (although Blacks trust the media less). But they tune Sanders out, because their main purpose for voting in national elections is to keep the White Man’s Party, the Republicans, out of the White House, and believe Clinton has a better shot. Almost everything else is bullshit.
There is a direct and dialectical relationship between this historical Politics of Fear, as we have described it in these pages, and the hegemonic domination of a calcified and infinitely corrupt Black Misleadership Class whose primary loyalty is to the Democratic Party, which for two generations has been their route into the corridors of money and power. They “deliver” that vote to the highest bidders in a party structure that is under the commanding influence of finance capital and its representatives (currently, the many-times-over-bought-and-paid-for Clintons). The mantra is, effectively, “All Power to the Democratic Party!” – brokered, of course, by the Black political class. Paralyzed by fear of the White Man’s Party, Black voters find a false sense of power in clustering around the perceived “winners” on the Democratic Party menu.
“Clinton campaigned vigorously for Barry Goldwater.”
That’s why it makes no decisive difference at the polls when a genuine Black popular icon like my dear friend Cornel West contradicts Atlanta Congressman John “De Lawd” Lewis’s contention that Clinton has “been there” with Black folks over the decades, while shamelessly questioning whether a 20-something Bernie Sanders was actually among the two hundred thousand-strong crowd at the March on Washington in 1963. As Dr. West wrote:
“Clinton has touted the fact that, in 1962, she met King after seeing him speak, an experience she says allowed her to appreciate King’s ‘moral clarity.’ Yet two years later, as a high schooler, Clinton campaigned vigorously for Barry Goldwater – a figure King called ‘morally indefensible’ owing to his staunch opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And she attended the Republican convention in 1968! Meanwhile, at this same moment in history, Sanders was getting arrested for protesting segregation in Chicago and marching in Washington with none other than King itself. That’s real moral clarity.”
But moral clarity – and coherent thought – withers amidst the Politics of Fear. “Black Power” devolves to a shuffling and clustering around the most well-healed, right-wing Democratic candidate vetted by Wall Street. That candidate’s victory represents an objective defeat for the historical Black political agenda on social justice and peace. Yet, it will be celebrated as a benchmark of Black progress and POWER (‘the hands that picked cotton...’), because African Americans were on the winning side of the contest. Such is the great paradox of Black national electoral politics since the demise of the Black Liberation Movement and the rise of the Black Misleadership Class.
“Black Power” devolves to a shuffling and clustering around the most well-healed, right-wing Democratic candidate vetted by Wall Street.”
The question of self-determination lies at the heart of the political crisis in Black America. If masses of Blacks at this point in history cannot overcome a mind-twisting fear of the Republican/White Man’s Party, to vote their own, thoroughly documented leftist politics in national elections, then activists should treat the duopoly process, itself, like poison. History shows us that the Black self-determinationist imperative blooms and thrives in movement politics – the only kind of politics that can circumvent and ultimately overcome the entrenched and morally defective Black Misleadership Class, who are inextricably entwined with the Democratic Party and its rich financiers.
If movement activists fail to vaccinate themselves against the Democratic Party contagion, they will become its drones and replicants. Hillary Clinton has benefited greatly from her encounters with the Campaign Zero wing of Black Lives Matter. She has parlayed her two chats with the group, in which no substantive demands were put forward, into yet another episode in her “I’ve been with Black folks through decades of struggle” fiction. Bizarrely, the young Black people that made cameo appearances in Hillary’s “Black Lives Matter” drama may boast that they have had a significant impact on the presidential campaign. They’re right. Congratulations: You sanitized a pig.
The International Monetary Fund has a long history of insisting on loan conditionalities which are harmful to public services. This practice did not change even during the pandemic, with African…
Leftist formation wins Colombian presidential election, the effort to end involuntary servitude in U.S. prisons, the impeachment of a Black legislator in Brazil, and the nature of fascism and need…
Ajamu Baraka is National Organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace. He joins us to discuss the recent election results in Colombia where Gustavo Petro, became the new president, and Francia Marquez,…
Savannah Eldrige is the founder of Coaliton to Abolish Slavery in Texas, an organization devoted to ending involuntary servitude in that state. She is also the founder of Be Frank 4 Justice which…
Renato Freitas is a Black City Councillor in Curitiba, Brazil. He and others joined in national protests over the killing of Congolese immigrant Mugenyi Kabagambe, who was beaten to death after…
