Vision Circle

Black conservatives don't have enough market penetration or bandwidth for the totality of their message to get through the media. It's simply too big a task at this time.

I am quite happy to be ahead of the curve having processed what I consider to be a fair-minded assessment of the movement. It's going to be successful in due time, and my conservative expectation of 25% of African Americans actively Republican within a few years still stands.

I'm really not sweating it at all.

James Thindwa states that "tone and language" matter in this dialogue. 'Tone and language' are proxies for interests and identity. The chasm will not be closed until black conservatives can jump into these pitched battles without being subsidized by white folks with CRYSTAL CLEAR TRACK RECORDS OF DIAMETRIC OPPOSITION to the slate of socio-economic/political goals of black folk. Connerly and Armstrong are examples of this. It is problematic that advocates of a color-blind, free market economy are UNABLE to COMPETE on merit - and require the assistance of sponsors. These inconsistencies BLEED through the tone and language of their discourse. It is revealed in the lack of an operational program to change the conditions they denounce. It is revealed in the absence of a commitment to operational unity that transcends imported ideologies. It is revealed in the fiscally unsound manner in which these individuals operate their organizations. Funds do not derive from sales or operations, but from sponsorships and pimping (black-face co-signing for a price). That's no way to run a business - and it's no way to enlist the support of black folk. The NAACP suffers from the same dynamic. The membership numbers are in the toilet and the prospects of increase are minimal. Traditional CRM groups and black conservatives (as discussed in the article) have much in common when it comes to their finances, intellectual leadership, and operations management. External operatives continue to put forth platforms that do not serve the best interests of black collectives. By and large, black folks have moved on from both types of appeals. In point of fact, black conservatives have about as much chance of garnering 25% of anything (let alone black votes) as the Detroit Lions do of fielding a competitive team. Not gonna happen.

When black conservatives take the approach of Booker T. Washington to heart - and become the leading EMPLOYERS, EDUCATORS and PROVIDERS (real estate, utilities, apparel, etc.), then they can talk about being authentically representative. Until then, they have no shot. And black conservatives are not going to do that - it's not part of the ACTIVE philosophy...it's part of the historic legacy - but not part of the active philosophy. It's not a priority - and it would require building bridges across ideology.

cobb...never met ya, but i like you - so don't hold your breath. i'd like for you to see the new year.

What I meant to add is that everybody with more than a minute's attention span knows that Jesse Lee Peterson intends to be the Anti-Jesse Jackson, and he will continue his often abominable polemics until he gets his own talk show or kingdom. He's equally unelectable and illustrates the other side of the low denomination coin of jackleg leadership.

You know that the black liberal political base is not an active base but a passive one. The activists are all college lefties, and community center types. Black conservatives are higher margin folks coming from organizations that are a bit more organized. Speaking from my end of the totem pole, it's difficult for black conservatives to respect the organizations that sustain black liberals. So we doubt that they are capable of all the high-minded change they spew.

All it takes is a superstar player in the draft. You keep forgetting that Denzel Washington is a Republican. He plays cops & soldiers in all his films.

There is nothing more repulsive to me than watching black community organizers dance with glee when they get their little corporate handout t-shirts to 'keep kids off drugs'. There are still people who mourn the death of CETA. But from the Republican side (and I don't see Peterson as a Republican, but as a conservative wingnut) it's about the kind of empowerment that doesn't register on that radar - about policies that favor small business. And African America has an entire generation of community activists who don't know squat about making money, and everything about grant applications.

So I think that gap is going to remain, and so long as liberals are motivated to do community babysitting nothing is going to change. Keeping kids off drugs and keeping kids out of gangs - this is parents work from a Republican standpoint. So you set up a set of rewards and punishments for adults, not kids. But I think everybody understands that those parents will not be moved. They are not motivated or capable to do any such thing. And it is the political and social inertia of the black working poor, that has been dressed up to sound like 'permanent interests'. These are the people who end up complaining about Mexican labor.

Booker lived in another time, and I say and society makes it clear that the fate of all blackfolks does not hang from the same tree. That was the age of the Negro. So we don't need his kind of global preaching about the future of the race. In all of my work online, it is not about the future of the race, it is about the representation of the best of the culture as embodied in an elite. Fuedal family dynasties within a pluralistic society. It's quaint, I must admit but I'd like some of the flavor maintained - jazz played by people with New Orleans jazz roots by blood.

It makes no sense to keep trying to classify black people/voters as if they are white people/voters.

The Black Conservative message sounds remarkably like the message you can get in any AME or Missionary Baptist church, if you go.

damn. wasn't that the point of voting rights? who cares what goes down in the AME? not the government.

What I meant to add is that everybody with more than a minute's attention span knows that Jesse Lee Peterson intends to be the Anti-Jesse Jackson, and he will continue his often abominable polemics until he gets his own talk show or kingdom.

He has his own radio talk show.

He's equally unelectable and illustrates the other side of the low denomination coin of jackleg leadership.

You should have added, "being propped up by conservatives such as Sean Hannity".

The activists are all college lefties, and community center types.The activists are all college lefties, and community center types.

Am I missing something when ask, "Ain't the community center types the types that conservatives want to reach out to? Those who are doing work in the community?"

cobb...

i see clearly that you will not engage the core of the discussion because it doesn't serve you. i didn't mention btw to reference preaching and negroes. that was strictly about his - and garvey's - pull over material resources in a way that dictated opinion (albeit generating enemies). today's conservatives are not cut from that same cloth. plain and simple...this is not about the spoken word - it's about the imposed paradigm. conservatives won't be doing that.

If Jesse Lee Petersen and 'black conservatives' are the core of the discussion, I have nothing to say. There are only two black conservatives that I have ever cared to seriously hear out and they are Thomas Sowell and Glenn Loury - both economists. That should be pretty much the end of it. Other than that, I don't take the Black Commentator seriously enough to answer any of their charges.

As for Hannity, I never thought he had two neurons to rub together. But I see that their is such a huge temptation to suggest that all black conservatives want to do is sell out the black community and act white, that none of our critics are addressing arguments head on.

I am not disappointed, and I don't need to expect any better. I'm just doing what I do, openly in public. It makes the ha-ha told you so that much more delicious. Speaking of which.. I wonder what's up with The Million Men.

sowell and loury - at the theoretical...but at the practical, on the ground - it's the same as it ever was - and that's no way to get to 25%.

your comments with respect to folks blasting conservatives as sell outs and acting white may be correct. nonetheless, i continue to contend they have more in common with the so-called liberals than either side would care to admit.

in any case, empirically sound platforms are in short suppy - and so are funds derived from anything other than panhandling and profiteering in the marketplace of sham ideology. take a side - same coin.

The full response is here.

the full response to thindwa is there...i've ceased waiting.

If Jesse Lee Petersen and 'black conservatives' are the core of the discussion, I have nothing to say.

For me, it's much more than those two.

that none of our critics are addressing arguments head on

*SNORT*