This Black Conservative Didn't Own Anything But A Poor Argument

This Black Conservative Didn't Own Anything But A Poor Argument
Rant #21 (Opinion)


April 1, 2020



This video just bugged me as soon as it began:

https://www.facebook.com/thehodgetwins/videos/813591575818557/

Wow, the one Black Trump supporter in that state soo "owned" the liberal there...

K, first off, the KKK may've been originally founded by somebody who was a Democrat. Ok. And? Lincoln was a Republican. The parties had a different alignment back then. By no means do the party divisions of the Reconstruction era some 150 years ago have much to do with where they stand today on most issues. As a rough generalization, the GOP came about as a party which supported urbanization and manufacturing (the legacy of Hamiltonian ideology), eventually giving way to representing big business. But before that, the Republicans--beginning with Lincoln--did things to encourage education, by establishing public colleges; fostering railroads so that it could connect the country and build up American industry; promoting the primacy of the federal government over states, which gave DC the power to outlaw slavery in individual states. The Republicans at that time also had socially liberal leanings, which was more than anybody could say about the Democrats back then. In more ways than not, Lincoln was a progressive--he originally did not necessarily want to act on those views to eliminate slavery, but the secession of the South sort of forced his hand on that one. 

Democrats, meanwhile, at that time advocated for the rights of the states to choose their own paths--their words, not mine. State's rights was and continues to be a racist dog whistle, oftentimes. The Democrats tended to envision an agrarian America, a perversion of Jeffersonian ideals. A populist wing of the party existed in the north, south, and the sparsely populated west for some time after the Civil War. 

So yes, technically, segregation and Southern racism and even the KKK had a home in the Democratic Party at the end of the 19th century. Northern Democrats differed on issues of race, a split which would persist through the midpoint of the following century, suffering a final fissure with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Until then, in any presidential election, Democrats could rely on the "Solid South" to vote for its candidate--in many elections, a Democrat did not win any states outside of Mississippi, Alabama, and the like. It should also be noted that until the end of the 20th century even past the party realignment of the 1960s, Congress and local politics were home to a number of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats: predictable polarization was largely not cemented until the 21st century.

Prior to the 1960s, a few notable changes in politics occurred because of the Roosevelts: first, Teddy at the turn of the century, then FDR in the 1930s and 40s. Teddy Roosevelt took on some of the larger corporations in America and instituted regulations in key areas. In foreign policy, he was what you might call a neocon, and an empire-builder, yet also had some progressive social views. In fact, he ran as a third-party Progressive candidate after serving two terms, though historians usually call it the "Bull Moose Party" because of something he said at a rally. 

However, after that, the Republicans took an isolationist stance, while Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat) ultimately brought America into World War 1 and at its end set up a League of Nations, which a Republican Senate promptly rejected. Increasingly, the party moved to the right on all issues. The GOP ran some successful Republican candidates in the 1920s; Herbert Hoover was a former CEO who served as president when the US entered the Great Depression. His laissez-faire 'let the market decide' ideals did not help the country in the worst economic crisis in our history.

All in all, Republican dominance in national politics characterized the period from the Civil War to the Great Depression. Out of 35 sessions of Congress from 1861 to 1931, Republicans held the House 23 times and the Senate 29--66% and 83% of the time, respectively. Then, enter FDR. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

FDR immediately began applying Keynesian economic theory, injecting capital into the economy by doing massive deficit spending and greatly expanding the scope of the federal government. Social security, food stamps, tons of government work programs all started under the New Deal. Their position as the party of workers was all but solidified. Southern Democrats, or "Dixiecrats," helped fill the Congress up with Democrats, even though many held socially conservative views, allied mainly with Midwestern Republican conservatives.

Shortly after John F. Kennedy's death, his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, was instrumental in passing the Civil Right Act of 1964. Having formerly served as Senate Majority Leader, this Democrat from Texas almost magically managed to get the votes necessary to pass this monumental legislation, knowing very well that it might cost him the Congress. Allegedly, Johnson told an aide that "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come."

And he did. And yet after almost a century of constituting a solid Republican voting block, Blacks moved away from "the Party of Lincoln" and into the party that helped pass the civil rights legislation. Johnson's "War on Poverty" helped maintain support among urban workers.

The Nixon campaign in 1968 used what they called the "Southern strategy" to swoop up racially resentful Whites in the South. It worked...the next time around. That election, George Wallace ran as a renegade Dixiecrat and won the Southern states--the last third-party candidate to win a state in a presidential election. In 1972, Nixon won the South. In 1972, Nixon won everywhere other than Massachusetts and DC, and a faithless elector in Virginia. 

Since then, these electoral trends have largely stuck. Shifting demographics and trends saw the Congress move into Republican hands after the 1994 midterm elections. The GOP has held an advantage in the legislative body. From 1931 to 1995, Democrats held the Senate in 26 of 30 sessions of Congress and the House in 29--87% and 97%, respectively. In the 13 sessions from 1995 through today, 8 and a half Senates were Republican-held, as were 10 Houses--65% and 77%, respectively. I used 8 and a half due to the fact that the 107th Congress (2001-03) began with a 50-50 partisan split, until Jim Jeffords left the GOP to become an independent who caucused with the Democrats.

A few other notes about the poorly-constructed arguments in this video: Blacks do make up only 13% of the population, and they are arrested for a disproportionate amount of crimes: 26.6% of all criminal arrests, including 51.1% of homicides, based on 2015 data. Arguing that "colored people" account for 55% is misleading, because that term can refer to groups other than African-Americans as well. When looking at all violent crime, the rate drops to 36.4%--still nearly 3x as high as their proportion of the population.

However, that does not mean that Blacks commit that share of all the actual crimes committed--just the arrests. And in the American criminal justice system, biases run rampant. At every level, racial disparities are exacerbated by a complex set of mechanisms. Police tend to profile African-Americans and pull them over or stop them more frequently; victims and bystanders tend to report them frequently. For equal crimes, judges are more likely to imprison Black people, and for longer sentences. Also, poverty factors in immensely to this problem. When controlling for income, the racial gap begins to close. Furthermore, differences in educational opportunities and family structure also contribute to criminal outcomes. So when the guy says that lacking father figures adds to eventual criminal activity among Black youths, that isn't untrue. The reason for this is nuanced. Some have suggested that because suburban and exurban communities in the Midwest and Northeast providing less well-paid job opportunities than they did in previous generations, the same types of trends once claimed to be unique to Blacks involving dangerous drug use, deteriorating family structures, deaths of despair, etc now routinely afflict Whites as well.

Chances are that the Belmont police officer did not wake up that morning and think "Damn, I want to shoot some Black people today." That is absurd. Don't be gaslit by this: prejudice doesn't need to coexist within violent racism. Somebody with preconceptions of a certain nature doesn't need to have conscious hate toward certain people. Come on. What a cheap, lame argument there--if you can call it that.

Police involved in shootings of innocent minorities don't get off the hook necessarily because of conscious and deliberately racist attitudes at every level of government. Structural racism and the rules regarding police conduct in most areas allow this to happen and for officers to come out on top. Most police departments in the country go a whole year without any policeman firing a single shot. Yet police departments also rarely dedicate time to bias training for cops. They may spend hundreds of hours on the gun range practicing to shoot, while almost never--if at all--having an instructor explain how to recognize bias, assess situations and then diffuse them accordingly.

Lastly, I have no clue who this guy is or what a "hodgetwin" is. Maybe this man went his entire life without actually experiencing racism himself. And hey, I am a White man, personally I don't discriminate on those grounds, and maybe racism doesn't exist. Maybe all those older people who lived during segregation and fought hard against its eradication did so because of economic anxiety--they didn't want to share, it had nothing to do with sharing with other kinds of people. Maybe the exodus of Southern and other Whites from the Democratic Party after the Civil Rights Act was a coincidence, or the fact that a Democratic presidential candidate has never won a majority of White voters since after that. Perhaps every single Youtube comment, 4chan post, and other internet content all come from people just making jokes. Really, really ironic and graphic jokes. And hey, don't get me wrong, I have laughed at some things before that, out of context, one might judge--if crafted well, I'll laugh at a joke at any one or group's expense. But maybe the people who only laugh at jokes directed toward Blacks and other minorities while irate when made fun of themselves all have a very specific sense of humor. Maybe all those stereotypes that have persisted for decades and centuries really apply. Maybe the racists I've met, who casually express anything from basic tropes to genuine bate, are an anomaly. Maybe Trump got elected out of legitimate economic anxiety and overall ignorance, with no racial component, and all those analyses of racist Google searches correlated with areas that voted for Trump just happen to represent an odd coincidence, just like all the other countless data points and anecdotal accounts--just coincidences.

Or maybe any wealthy organization can find a few members of any demographic who don't identify with that particular categorization of themselves, or who for whatever reason feel that way. History has plenty of examples of this. Identities are complex: I might primarily consider myself American, you might call yourself White and then other classifications, while still another person may see themselves as a Protestant male first and foremost. Some may resent themselves and thus advocate against one of their own identities. Others, like this 'hodgetwin,' might benefit from their spot within the status quo, and seek to defend it--a rich Black guy might personally stand to lose more if Democrats win elections and implement racial equality AND raise taxes. Then you have those who just get a kick out of "pwning the libs." Phyllis Schlafly didn't want rights for women, and maybe this 'hodgetwin' doesn't think Black people should get any special protections, or that police shootings of innocent people in disproportionate numbers is a problem that requires a response. And everyone can certainly hold their own opinion.

Many things remain uncertain. One thing fully apparent here, though: this Black conservative owned nothing, other than a poor argument.

Works Cited


-Wikipedia, party divisions in each Congress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses

-FBI, crime statistics by race, 2015.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/table-43

-National Library of Medicine/National Institute of Health, effect of poverty on crime and race.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4097310/

-Facebook, "Hodgetwins" super lame video claiming to have a 'Black conservative own White liberals.'
https://www.facebook.com/thehodgetwins/videos/813591575818557/