Knowing your real enemy

There's a good article in the Washington Post today about the Republican Party's efforts to win support among black evangelicals.

Pastor Harry R. Jackson Jr. will often exhort his congregation to "stand against" abortion and same-sex marriage. "You are on the battlefield in a culture war," he'll say, urging his listeners to help serve as the "moral compass of America."

In his rhetoric and his political agenda, Jackson has much in common with other evangelical Christians who are part of the conservative wing of the Republican party, except that Jackson is African American and so is his congregation at Hope Christian Church in Prince George's County.

Jackson, head of a group of socially conservative black pastors called the High Impact Leadership Coalition, in many ways personifies the possibilities that Republican strategists such as Karl Rove have seen in appealing to the social conservatism of many African American churchgoers. Blacks overwhelmingly identify themselves as Democrats and typically support Democratic candidates, but optimists in the GOP think one way to become a majority party is to peel off a sizable segment of black voters by finding common ground on social issues.

As a group, blacks attend religious services more frequently than whites and are less supportive of gay rights. In a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation-Harvard University poll this summer, 43 percent of white Democrats supported same-sex marriage, about double the percentage of black Democrats who said they do. More than half of blacks said they oppose both same-sex marriage and legal recognition of same-sex civil unions.

In the 2004 election, there was evidence that an appeal aimed at those differences could work. President Bush nearly doubled his share of the black vote in Ohio, thanks to a same-sex-marriage initiative on the ballot and the targeting of black churchgoers through mailings and radio ads. But it's unlikely that the 2008 Republican presidential candidate will be able to consolidate those gains, and Jackson is one indication of why.

During the last presidential election cycle, Jackson prayed for Bush and crisscrossed the country pressing conservative social issues. Now he's pushing an issues agenda rather than "carrying the water for the Republican party," he said. "They are not reliable enough."

Jackson's discontent is a reflection of the worries of other religious conservatives, black and white, who fear that Republican voters will nominate pro-choice candidate and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and are still chafing at the headline-grabbing sex and ethics scandals involving Republicans.

"You don't have someone who is a Christian evangelical like Bush to really revitalize the black evangelicals this time around," said John C. Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Bush promised colorblind appointments and launched the faith-based initiative, and the timing of his run coincided with several state ballot initiatives banning same-sex marriage that turned out large numbers of evangelicals, Green said. The Republicans running this year have not made the same appeal.

Other conservative black preachers raise a different issue.

"Morality is different in terms of the way we see it and white evangelicals see it," said Pastor Lyle Dukes of Harvest Life Changers Church in Woodbridge, a member of Jackson's group who supported Bush in 2004. "What we think is moral is not only the defense of marriage, but we also think equal education is a moral issue. We think discrimination is immoral."

Dukes is looking at candidates in both parties this year.

Bishop Timothy J. Clarke, leader of the 5,000-member First Church of God in Columbus, Ohio, said: "You have to prioritize. You are dealing with a less-than-perfect world and a less-than-perfect system."

Clarke has worked with Jackson's coalition but also hosted Democratic presidential candidates in 2004. He said he and his members care as much about health care and livable wages as they do about conservative social issues.

On his way out of the noon Bible study at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in the District the other day, Stephen Peagler, 27, said he is a faithful churchgoer who believes that abortion and same-sex marriage are wrong. But, he said, when it comes to voting, he's looking for a candidate who will address issues that are more relevant in his everyday life. And Democrats are more likely to deal with the high incarceration rates of black men and underperforming inner-city schools, he said.

The greatest problem facing Republicans in trying to make inroads into the black community is the tendency of blacks to see any inequality which reflects poorly on blacks to be the result of some kind of structural racism which is embedded so deeply into American society that it is all but ineradicable. Further they believe that this racism threatens the very survival of black people in America and that the only way to hold this racism at bay is through massive government intervention.

Thus when black men are seen to make up the majority of the population in the nation's prisons it must be because the criminal justice system is racist rather than the truth which is that black men are the ones committing most of the crimes. If inner-city schools are underperforming it must be because the racist white city government is keeping them starved for resources rather than the truth which is that all too many black families in the inner-city don't teach their children to value education, don't supervise their children adequately and don't maintain the kind of stable home life which helps send a child to school ready to learn.

A high crime rate in the inner-city is seen is seen by blacks as proof that the racist government doesn't care about them yet effective law enforcement measures will always wind up arresting large numbers of black men because they are the ones committing the vast majority of crimes. This arresting of black men will be attacked as racism on the part of the police and the courts by the same "leaders" who were before denouncing the high crime rate as proof of racism.

Whites stand back and shake their heads (well white conservatives do, white leftists see an opportunity to pander for votes) and wonder if there's something in the water. But the answer is relatively simple. Blacks learned the wrong lesson from the civil rights movement.

What the civil rights movement originally came together to oppose was the racist laws in the Southeast which mandated racial segregation in both the public and private sphere. Not only were local governments required to provide separate schools for black and white students but private businesses were required to provide "separate but equal" facilities for black and white patrons.

After a great deal of struggle and sacrifice those laws were overturned at the federal level. The lesson too many black people learned was that government action can make there lives better. The real lesson should have been that the Jim Crow laws were a government intrusion into the lives of the citizenry which made people's lives worse therefore government intrusions are bad and must be opposed.

As a result of learning that wrong lesson blacks have sought one government intrusion after another and have paid a horrible price for it. Before all the laws and government programs which were to "help" blacks the black illegitimacy rate was only a little higher than it was for whites. Now it approaches 70%. In fact outside of the Jim Crow South (where government was intruding with the segregation laws) blacks were making astounding progress in areas like home ownership, personal income and business ownership. It may be hard for some people to believe but black progress from the end of the Civil War till the beginning of the Civil Rights era was actually greater than it has been since the beginning of the Civil Rights era (again, outside of the Jim Crow South were government was intruding).

In virtually every area where the black community is in trouble, the destruction of the black family, the rising illegitimacy rate, crime, drugs and failing schools the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of government policies which were supported by black leaders and still have broad support within the black community.

Can these black pastors really be serious when they call for turning over the nations health care system to the same kind of people who turned his children's school into a place where students get straight A's for just showing up and not threatening the teacher and every day is counted a success if the kid is able to get through it without being shot, knifed, raped or addicted to crack?

With all due respect to by black brothers and sisters in Christ, GOVERNMENT IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. DEMOCRATS ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS. Democrats want you to stay exactly where you are right now. Poor and dependant upon their handouts. They don't want your schools to educate your children so that black students won't be able to get into college without affirmative action so that black college graduates won't be able to get jobs in business or government without affirmative action so that affluent black professionals will feel that they owe their positions not to their own ability but to a government handout so that they will continue to vote Democrat.

Democrats want most black children to be born to single mothers who are on public assistance so that they will grow up thinking of government as their father. They want those single black mothers to feel that their lives and the lives of their children literally depend upon a check from the government. Just like they want old people to think that the only thing between them and eating dog food, or freezing to death on the street, is their government check. This guarantees that they will keep voting for the people who sign that check.

Just because the chains aren't made of steel and you can't feel their weight on your hands and feet doesn't mean they aren't there.

And a note to the Republican Party. If just 20% of the black population could be weaned off of dependence upon government and persuaded to vote Republican there would never again be a Democrat controlled House, Senate or White House. It will not help to nominate a presidential candidate who spits on the moral issues where blacks and Republicans already agree.