When you look at American history, the Republican party originally started as a coalition of anti-slavery groups working to end slavery, went on to fight a civil war to end slavery, and then proceeded to have a long history of fighting for black rights, including being the ones that passed the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to the US Constitution. The Democratic party has a long history of slavery, of racism, of subjugating the black people, of black oppression, and of perpetrating one evil after another against the black people – that’s their legacy. For the longest time, most African Americans understood this, and that was why most of them were Republicans. But, at some time in the past, a switch took place, so that today most African Americans are Democrats. This switch is known as the Big Switch. So, that begs a big, important question:
Given the fact that the Republican party were the ones that had a long history of fighting for black rights, why do most African Americans today identify as Democrats, even though that party has a long history of racism, of subjugating blacks, and of perpetrating one evil after another on the black people?
One argument given by the Democrats is that it was the Democratic party that pushed the Civil Rights bills of the 1950’s and ’60’s, whereas the Republicans were not responsible for them. But we know that this is not true – the Republicans were more supportive of those Civil Rights bills than the Democratic party was, the only real opposition to passing those Civil Rights bills came from Democrats, not Republicans, and the only opposition from state governments came from ones that were controlled by the Democrats. So, we know this argument is incorrect.
Another argument given by the Democratic party themselves is that Richard Nixon, a Republican, in order to win his presidential election in November of 1968, had to do what’s been called by leftist historians as the southern strategy, which was an appeal to southern white supremacists, in order to win his election. But we know this is also not true. Most southern states – if you look at their electoral college vote – did not vote for Nixon, but his Democratic opponent, and most southern states didn’t become majority Republican for another two or three decades after that. So we know that this is not a valid argument either.
This brings us back to square one – Why did most African Americans switch from the Republican to the Democratic party?
The Real Reason for the Big Switch
The truth of the matter is that most African Americans switched from the Republican party to the Democratic party during the first half of the 1930’s, decades before the Civil Rights Movement and Nixon’s supposed southern strategy. In 1930, only about 10 percent of black voters voted Democratic. By 1936, a mere six years later, almost three-fourths, or around 75 percent, of black voters voted Democratic. This means that the “Big Switch,” the switching of black people from the Republican to the Democratic party, didn’t take place during Nixon’s southern strategy. It also means that this switch didn’t take place during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, like one of the Democratic party’s false narratives claims.
I mean, why would it have, given the fact that higher percentages of Republican lawmakers voted for those laws than the Democratic lawmakers, and given the fact that it was Democratic governors in the south that blocked integration laws from going into effect, forcing federal troops to come and enforce those laws? I don’t think any black person alive at the time, if they were Republicans, would have switched to the Democratic party; that switch would have primarily already happened, and I’m telling you that it was in the 1930’s that it happened.
A Little Evidence
Here’s another interesting piece of evidence to validate my claim: The very first African American to be elected to the US House of Representatives as a Democrat was elected in late 1934, and took his seat in January 1935. He was a gentleman named Arthur W. Mitchell who represented Illinois’ first district. If you look at this Wikipedia page, you’ll notice that since then, there has been an almost endless stream of African American representatives who were Democrats, and that only in the last few decades have we started to see a few black representatives who are Republican, like they were in the early days after the Civil War ended and before the mid-1930’s.
Think about this – this endless stream of Democratic black representatives begins in the mid-1930’s. It doesn’t begin later in the 1950’s or 1960’s, but decades earlier in the mid-1930’s. Now why would this seemingly endless stream of Democratic black representatives begin in the 1930’s if the Big Switch – the massive switch of African Americans from the Republican to the Democratic party – didn’t take place until decades later? That absolutely doesn’t make sense!
Back to the Topic
So, this begs another question:
Why did the black community switch to the Democratic party at a time when it was still very heavily the party of racism, white supremacy, segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the KKK? Obviously, blacks didn’t switch to the Democratic party because they thought it was the party that fought for their rights; they switched in spite of the Democratic party’s strong connection to racism and subjugating the blacks.
The answer goes something like this: during the Great Depression, everyone was suffering economic hardships; destitution and poverty and hard times were widespread. But no one was struggling more than those in the black community – because they were treated like second-class citizens, they always were worse off than the whites and anyone else. This time was no exception, but because everyone was in bad shape, the black community was in even worse shape. They were truly in dire straights.
Then Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt came along with his New Deal programs, and some of these programs allowed black people to get employment through the government. The Republicans weren’t offering anything because they weren’t in power – if they were in power, they would have changed the dynamics to have caused the Great Depression to have ended years earlier than it actually did, and by doing so would have reduced the economic suffering of tens of millions of Americans, including the blacks.
Important Facts
There are some important pieces of information you need to keep in mind. First, the blacks weren’t allowed to partake of every New Deal program, but only a handful of them, and the ones they were allowed to take advantage of, blacks were segregated from the whites and paid less than them.
Also keep in mind that in order for someone to be eligible for working in these New Deal programs, they were required to register as Democrats, had to pledge that they would vote for Democratic politicians, and in many cases were even required to agree to have one percent of their income deducted to be used for FDR’s reelection campaign fund – if they didn’t do those things, they would have never been able to work in those programs.
Also keep in mind that for FDR to have the power that he did as a Democrat to pass his legislation, he had to make a pact with the more racist members of his political party – he promised to not support, or sign, any desegregation or anti-lynching legislation that might be endorsed or pushed by the Republican minority or the black community, and he did this in order to get all the Democrats behind his big-government New Deal legislation, and he kept that promise during the whole tenure of his presidency.
Side Note: Background
At the time that the Great Depression began, a Republican named Herbert Hoover was the US President. Because of this, many leftists falsely blame free-market capitalism for the Depression. In fact, during the period, many shantytowns popped up across the United States, and they were nicknamed “Hooverville” in honor of President Hoover.
In reality, Hoover, although a Republican, was a progressive. When an economic recession took hold, instead of just riding it out, and doing a government-hands-off approach that’s favored by free-market capitalist advocates, and letting the market correct itself naturally, he decided instead, like all good progressives, that the government should intervene. It was that government intervention that turned what could have been a short-term recession into a full-fledged depression, which FDR inherited when he became President.
FDR then proceeded with his New Deal programs, and the high taxes needed to fund them. While his programs helped to stimulate the economy somewhat, his high taxes worked to stifle full economic recovery. The two things worked against each other, helping to keep the nation’s economy in a place of stagnation that only widened and deepened throughout the depression, and didn’t end until the Second World War.
Here’s another thing to note: in the last half of the nineteenth century, the United States experienced two deep recessions that quickly corrected themselves in less than a year because the government kept their hands off and didn’t interfere. In 1929, the story was different. The government interfered and things got worse, waaaaay worse.
Also keep in mind that the economic recession in 1929 that led to the Great Depression was caused by some market bubbles bursting, such as the stock market bubble that had formed. These bubbles were caused by the government interfering in the free market at the behest of rich people trying to get richer.
So, thus, no part of the Great Depression was caused by government-hands-off free market capitalism. Everything about it was caused by government intervention in the economy.
Now, back to the story.
Blacks historically looked at the Republican party as being the party of the Black Cause, but because they were desperate, they felt like they had no choice but to forcibly comply to stay alive.
It was in this environment that the blacks switched to the Democratic party. In other words, the black community switched parties not because the Democrats opposed racism like today’s Democratic false narrative suggests; instead, it was because of economic reasons that they switched parties, and it was despite the record of racism and white supremacy that the Democratic party represented at the time. In fact, it could be argued, based on the information that I just gave you, that black people were forced against their will or strongarmed into identifying as Democrats just to not go hungry and be relieved from their abject poverty that they were struggling with at the time. Today’s black community seems to have forgotten all of this.
The leadership of the Democratic party at the time could hardly believe their good fortune, of blacks coming to their party in droves. They didn’t think the black community would take the bait, but they did. They realized that by giving the black community “just a little something to nibble on,” blacks would continue to vote for them and support their party.
It was under this mindset that the Civil Rights Movement took place a couple of decades later. Republican lawmakers voted in favor of these civil rights bills in very high percentage amounts because they had always been fighting for the black cause. Democratic lawmakers voted for these civil rights bills in lower percentage amounts than the Republicans because there were still some white supremacists in their party that voted against these bills, and those that did vote in support of them did so because they thought, “we need to create a bait to give blacks a little something to continue nibbling on in order to get them to keep voting for us.” Their motive for voting for the Civil Rights bills was very different than the motive which drove the Republicans to vote in favor of the bills.
This was also the Democratic party’s mentality when they passed the social welfare programs of the 1960’s, which they promoted most heavily on the black community, as a little something for them in exchange for their continued vote – these social welfare programs, which the black community continues to support as something that’s good for them, has been, in reality, catastrophic to the black community; it keeps large swaths of the black community chronically poor while continuing to decimate the black family, all while creating and magnifying the very disparities that we today refer to as systemic racism.
Even today the Democratic party continues to push these programs on the black community despite more than half a century of evidence that they’ve been catastophic and destructive to the black community. So, why doesn’t the Democratic party come clean and drop these terrible programs that are, in reality, so destructive to the black community? Well, there’s a very good reason for why they don’t do that.
The Democratic Party Today
Today’s Democratic party has evolved to the point where they are heavily reliant on the black vote, and the votes of other people of color, to maintain their power, and in order to get them, especially blacks, to continue voting for them, they need to make them think that they are on their side, so they have to create this false narrative that it’s the Republicans that are racist, and the Democrats who have their backs. They create the illusion that “racism is everywhere” to frighten blacks into continuing to vote for them, despite the fact that their legislation, even today, is anti-black and works to keep down the black community.
When blacks look around, and see something that they think is proof of racism, you can be rest assured that whatever that thing is, except for those things that fall under the false perception of microaggression, that there is virtually a 100 percent chance that problem was caused by the Democratic party, their anti-black policies, and the effects of those anti-black policies on creating and worsening those problems. And if that’s the case, how can the Democratic party then be the solution to all of the problems that they are responsible for causing?
Here’s another piece of evidence for you: many black people complain about the kind of plight suffered by members of the black community. They complain about the kind of terrible conditions that members of the black community suffer from. But, these people in the black community who complain about this plight, and these terrible conditions, do so because they live in cities that have been run and controlled by the Democratic party for decades. In other words, it’s the Democratic party’s terrible and destructive policies that have created the kind of conditions in the black community that they turn around and complain about.
And if that’s the case, how then can the Democratic party – the ones whose policies and programs caused all those problems – be the solution to all the problems they created? Maybe it’s time for those of you in the black community to realize that the Democratic party is not there to help you, but to keep you down. Why keep voting for them?
Conclusion
As for the real reason why most black people identify as Democrats today, and not Republicans, the political left is desperate and deliberate in their efforts of trying to make sure that black people never find out the real reason why their forebears departed from the party that long fought for their rights and joined the party that has a long history of keeping them down – even today.
In reality, the Democratic party never stopped being the party of racism and black oppression – they just switched tactics. Today, their programs and policies only serve to worsen our country’s systemic racism, and do nothing to improve the well-being or prosperity of members of the black community. The only thing they do is make large swaths of the black community chronically dependent on the government, where, as long as they stay in that place of dependence, don’t do the things they need to do to become prosperous. And the Democratic party needs this setup in order to keep members of the black community continuing to vote for them.
The Republican party is today touted by the Democrats as being the party of racism, even though the Republicans have a long history of fighting for black rights. And the Democrats who love to call Republicans racist? They are the party with a long history of racism, of subjugating the black people, of perpetrating one act of evil after another on the black people, and who continue today to worsen the plight of the black community, including worsening systemic racism.
Maybe it’s time for those of you in the African American community to come back to the party that always did have your back, looks at you as their equals, and loves you, and stop supporting the party that continues to look at you as inferior, panders to that wrongly-supposed inferiority, and continues to worsen your plight.
