Charles Payne - The Destructive Farce of $15.00 Minimum Wage & Melancholia

Charles Payne, a Fox Business Network contributor and co-host of "Varney & Co. discuses the recent debate surrounding calls for an increase in the minimum wage.

Protesters are framing the issue that corporations are part of a public domain and naturally they should share in their good fortunes.

Leveraging a mentality that things are "owed" rather than "earned" in America, unions and their agents along with those that still think Thomas More's Utopia is an ideal society are pushing for a minimum wage hike to $15.00 an hour - more than double the current rate.

Forces with ulterior motives continue to lead the lambs to slaughter.

Read more: http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/charlespayne/2013/08/31/the-destructive-farce-of-1500-minimum-wage--melancholia-n1688179

Quote of the Day

“The veil deliberately marks women as private and restricted property, nonpersons. The veil sets women apart from men and apart from the world; it restrains them, confines them, grooms them for docility. A mind can be cramped just as a body may be, and a Muslim veil blinkers both your vision and your destiny. It is the mark of a kind of apartheid, not the domination of a race but of a sex.”  

― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations

Voter IDs Are Not the Problem

 

UPDATE: American University Study (PDF) -- http://www.american.edu/spa/cdem/uplo...

Back Together Again - Roberta Flack w/Donny Hathaway - 1980

Quote of the Day

“I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.” ― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

The Conversation: Two black Republicans, have a candid and unscripted conversation about what it means to be a Republican right now.

Regina Roundtree is interviewed by Russell Williams of "The Challenge". the two of them, black Republicans, have a candid and unscripted conversation about what it means to be a Republican right now.

 

Quote of the Day

“The American Negro is a prime example of the survival of the fittest. ... He has been the outstanding example of American conservative: adjustable, resourceful, adaptable, patient, and restrained.” — George S. Schuyler, black conservative columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier

George Samuel Schuyler was an African-American author, journalist and social commentator known for his conservative views.

John McWhorter: A Better Way to Honor Dr. King's Dream

From the Wall Street Journal, on the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington: 

On the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, we will hear a good deal about how life in this country for black Americans has not changed as much as Martin Luther King Jr. might have wished. We will hear little to nothing about the role that certain strains of black progressive ideology have played in delaying the realization of King's dream.

 "It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro," King announced from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963. He was right, and America knew it. The following year, segregation was outlawed with the Civil Rights Act. The year after, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

The article continues: 

 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324165204579027071654840280.html

A Missed Opportunity: President Obama on the 50th Anniversary of MLK "I have a Dream" Speech

Marshawn Hogans expresses his disappointment with President Obama's missed opportunity to bring America together on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.

 

Ayn Rand - Southern Racists & the Civil Rights Movement

… The policy of the Southern states toward Negroes was and is a shameful contradiction of this country’s basic principles. Racial discrimination, imposed and enforced by law, is so blatantly inexcusable an infringement of individual rights that the racist statutes of the South should have been declared unconstitutional long ago.

The Southern racists’ claim of “states’ rights” is a contradiction in terms: there can be no such thing as the “right” of some men to violate the rights of others. The constitutional concept of “states’ rights” pertains to the division of power between local and national authorities, and serves to protect the states from the Federal government; it does not grant to a state government an unlimited, arbitrary power over its citizens or the privilege of abrogating the citizens’ individual rights.

It is true that the Federal government has used the racial issue to enlarge its own power and to set a precedent of encroachment upon the legitimate rights of the states, in an unnecessary and unconstitutional manner. But this merely means that both governments are wrong; it does not excuse the policy of the Southern racists.

One of the worst contradictions, in this context, is the stand of many so-called “conservatives” (not confined exclusively to the South) who claim to be defenders of freedom, of capitalism, of property rights, of the Constitution, yet who advocate racism at the same time. They do not seem to possess enough concern with principles to realize that they are cutting the ground from under their own feet. Men who deny individual rights cannot claim, defend or uphold any rights whatsoever. It is such alleged champions of capitalism who are helping to discredit and destroy it.

The “liberals” are guilty of the same contradiction, but in a different form. They advocate the sacrifice of all individual rights to unlimited majority rule — yet posture as defenders of the rights of minorities. But the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. …

Ayn Rand – Racism

Quote of the Day

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It is beyond me.

But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless.

A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant.

In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held — so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place — who knows?

 ― Zora Neale Hurston

Dr. Thomas Sowell - A Poignant Anniversary

Thomas Sowell, the conservative/libertarian economist, and author, writes:
 

The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, and of the Reverend Martin Luther King’s memorable “I have a dream” speech, is a time for reflections — some inspiring, and some painful and ominous.

At the core of Dr. King’s speech was his dream of a world in which people would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by “the content of their character.”

Judging individuals by their individual character is at the opposite pole from judging how groups are statistically represented among employees, college students or political figures.

Yet many — if not most — of those who celebrate the “I have a dream” speech today promote the directly opposite approach of group preferences, especially those based on skin color.

Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2013/08/27/a-poignant-anniversary

Charles Payne: Still About Jobs and Freedoms

The march in 1963 was for jobs and freedom-and today there are too few jobs and our freedoms are under attack.

We take many of these things for granted and often forget the foundation of blood, sweat, and tears that made America great. These days many are saying wealth is part of the public domain and therefore should be divvied up as such. This message sounds good to people working jobs that seem to have no future, low pay and low esteem. The message sounds good to people who want to work but can't find a job in this gridlocked economy. The message sounds good to people that think the rich only get richer at the expense of those that are not rich.

Read more: http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/charlespayne/2013/08/27/still-about-jobs-and-freedoms-n1674110

Dr. Anthony Bradley - Dispersing Poor People And Crime

Dr. Anthony Bradley, a professor at The King's College in New York City, writes about the moral component that is often missing when talking about poverty and crime.


What we have known throughout human history, however, is that what increases crime rates are criminals. People commit crimes because they believe it to be in their self-interest to violate the dignity and property of others. Criminals have a low view of their own dignity and the dignity of others. That’s a moral problem. Giving housing vouchers to men and women who have no moral reservations about committing crime, regardless of socio-economic status, is simply giving criminals a new place to violate others.

This phenomena was experienced when crime rates in Atlanta suburbs exploded after housing vouchers were given to many public housing residents in inner-city Atlanta. The crime rates went up not because low-income people from the city moved to new areas, because there were already low-income people in those areas. Crime increased because criminals found new opportunities to continue their criminal activity, again, because they do not value other people.

Read more: http://blog.acton.org/archives/58440-dispersing-poor-people-and-crime.html

Gregory Kane: Michael Bloomberg's 'stop-and-frisk' violates the Fourth Amendment

Gregory Kane, a conservative Columnist and visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University takes on New York City's 'stop-and-frisk' policy.

Today, civics class, we will make one last-ditch effort to explain to America's number one enemy of liberty, the law known as the Fourth Amendment.

It reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

In the plainest, simplest English imaginable, the Founding Fathers stated emphatically that the right of Americans to be secure "in their persons" and a few other things "shall not be violated."
That's a simple idea someone with even a single-digit IQ could grasp. But New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — yes, he's the nation's number-one enemy of the liberty in question — can't quite grasp it.

Read more: http://washingtonexaminer.com/michael-bloombergs-stop-and-frisk-violates-the-fourth-amendment/article/2534696

Ali Akbar - Content Of One’s Character

Ali Akbar, a conservative New Media strategist, writes about Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy and where we must go to achieve it.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who understood the context of time. Most importantly, he peered into the future, recognized his present and dismissed the past.

His unparalleled understanding of the context of time has left him no equal and with no successor. Malcolm X could not stand alongside the civil dignity of King. A young Jesse Jackson could not carry the mantle of King, caving instead to arrogance and profit. Opportunist Al Sharpton would only be worse — assisting in the power struggle that would deplete King’s organization. Student protestors Julian Bond and John Lewis too would leave much to be desired, though add numerous accolades to their names.

More: http://aliakbar.org/blog/2013/08/content-of-ones-character/

Hoodies, Violence and the Lies the Black Race is Built On

Crystal Wright, the conservative columnist for Town Hall.com, takes on black elites' who, she argues, promote a "doctrine of victimhood".

Personal responsibility is for whites only, according to black apologists like MSNBC’s Toure Neblett, Oprah, Russell Simmons, and the mainstream media. In the wake of the George Zimmerman not guilty verdict in the death of Trayvon Martin, this low expectation message is pushed relentlessly--that all men (except blacks) are created equal with certain unalienable rights among them “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Show me where it says that in the Declaration of Independence or Constitution.

Earlier this week, Oprah Winfrey, Queen of talk, declared Martin’s murder “the same” as Emmett Till. Eye roll! In 1955, Till was savagely murdered by two racist white men in Mississippi because he was a 14 year old black boy and a white woman thought he whistled at her. Martin, a 17 year old black teen tragically contributed to his own death by starting a fight with Zimmerman. Not the same, not even respectfully close. Oprah should stick with pushing Hollywood stereotypes of blacks by promoting her new film “The Butler” and leave history to experts who know it.

Read more: http://townhall.com/columnists/crystalwright/2013/08/13/hoodies-violence-and-the-lies-the-black-race-is-built-on-n1662272/page/full

Holder vs. Martin Luther King Jr.

Justice sues Louisiana to block vouchers for minority children.

 

Give Eric Holder credit for cognitive racial dissonance. On nearly the same day the Attorney General spoke in Washington to honor the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, his Justice Department sued to block the educational dreams of minority children in Louisiana.

Late last week, Justice asked a federal court to stop 34 school districts in the Pelican State from handing out private-school vouchers so kids can escape failing public schools. Mr. Holder's lawyers claim the voucher program appears "to impede the desegregation progress" required under federal law. Justice provides little evidence to support this claim, but there couldn't be a clearer expression of how the civil-rights establishment is locked in a 1950s time warp.

more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323407104579037020495325310.html

John Anthony sworn into office: The 1st black Republican in the Ill legislature in thirty years.

State Rep. John Anthony swears in as the representative for the 75th District. (CHRISTINA CHAPMAN VAN YPEREN cchapman@shawmedia.com)

State Rep. John Anthony (R) was sworn into office Monday evening on the steps of the Grundy County Courthouse. He becomes the first black Republican in the legislature in thirty years.

Read more: http://www.morrisdailyherald.com/2013/08/26/anthony-sworn-into-office-monday/awn2809/

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2013/08/26/2650882/swearing-in-ceremony-set-for-new.html

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?id=9220138

The Bad News Is Wrong - WSJ

A black commentator repudiates the New Great Migration.

The Wall Street Journal:

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which is known today primarily as the occasion of Martin Luther King's magnificent "I Have a Dream" speech. Such anniversaries generate a great deal of mundane commentary to the following effect: There is no denying we've made significant strides toward equality since Dr. King spoke, but we still have a long way to go, and enacting my preferred policies will help us get there.

The weakness in such a line of thinking is the assertion that "we still have a long way to go." Perhaps such an assertion was plausible in 1973, or even 1983. But it's 2013 and a black man is president of the United States. Is it remotely possible that the glass is still half empty?

more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323906804579036851865422482.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

Artur Davis - The Forgotten King

Originally published in Official Artur Davis

How depressing is it that the freshest commentary on Martin Luther King’s legacy is now twenty years old in its own right? Bill Clinton’s extended remarks at a Memphis church in 1993 remain the gold rhetorical standard for King commemoration: Clinton stretched a conventional riff about what King would make of contemporary America into an elegiac portrait of the self despair and internally inflicted injuries that haunt the black community, and the eloquence is deepened by Clinton’s sensitivity toward the national neglect that gave those wounds room to flourish.

Much of the speechifying and editorializing around this half week of “I Have a Dream” reminiscing will pale in comparison with Clinton’s talk. The favored cliché of a half empty, half full glass will pair the obvious successes—the fact that it will be a black president who occupies King’s place on the Lincoln Memorial to offer an official tribute; the emergence of a black economic elite that is one of the most potent consumer bases; the commonplace nature of advances for blacks in virtually every sector—with the just as apparent misses, from poverty to high rates of minority incarceration to the persistence of racial backlash. The most predictable liberal voices will invoke voter ID laws, stand your ground defenses, and stop and frisk police tactics in New York City as modern counterparts to Jim Crow and George Wallace, and conservative critics will seize on the gulf between each example and the harshly repressive color code of America pre 1965 to frame those same liberal voices as a farce.

There will be the inevitable effort to downsize King into the familiar ideological boxes of the past several decades.  But while something should be said for Ross Douthat’s perspective that a few contemporary ideological battles have aligned at least some conservatives with traditional civil rights priorities on education and criminal justice reform, there is even more to be said for the notion that King had, and likely would have continued to have, an ambiguous relationship with liberalism. If LBJ’s Great Society wasn’t sufficient to deter King from making his last initiative a Poor People’s march on Washington, it’s reasonable to envision his evolution toward skepticism about other antipoverty programs and their effectiveness. And while some of the critique would have demanded more spending and redistribution, it’s fair to speculate if some of it could have sounded more right-leaning themes. A man who founded a civil rights movement on the ethic of individual participation and self-worth may well have uncomfortable with, for example, welfare unconnected to work requirements: and that would have sharply shifted the perimeter of the debate over welfare during the next 25 years, a period when pre Clinton liberals generally defended and wrote into law a vision of unconditional government assistance.

Does that mean that King was a prospective cheerleader for the Reagan agenda? Hardly, but it is not so difficult to imagine King sympathizing with Robert Kennedy’s famous description of public education as the second most distrusted institution in the inner city (trailing only the police).   Or to see King turning into an early foe of the left’s contributions to urban pathology: from the hollowed out, decaying public housing structures crammed into the least desirable places on the city’s edge, to the bargains that political hacks negotiated, like a minimal police presence in exchange for peace with the gangs, and lucrative pensions for patronage jobs as a tradeoff for more robust social services. The interest group factionalism of the Democratic Party, it is also worth noting, is a descendant of the LBJ/Hubert Humphrey style liberalism that King seemed to be edging away from in his final months, in favor of Bobby Kennedy’s challenge to the Democratic machinery. If King had lived, it is not far-fetched to think that the next generation of partisan politics might have looked to him like something of a wasteland, as well as a protection racket for a lot of weak, ineffective dogmas.

In other words, one does not have to ridiculously envision King as a budget cutting, quota-bashing conservative to realize his potential for unsettling liberalism from a different, more eclectic vantage point. It is equally interesting to wonder how much polarization could have been avoided if one of the sharpest critics of urban dysfunction had been Martin Luther King as opposed to suburban conservatives, or if King’s evangelicalism had competed with fundamentalism to be the face of religion in politics during the seventies and eighties, or if King’s adeptness at defining a moral case for his goals had won over at least some of the blue collar whites and southern moderates who turned to the right.

That complex version of King that won’t receive enough analysis this week: the insurgent who understood the emptiness of ideological orthodoxy; the reformer who was slipping out of the orbit of patronage based, interest group politics that damages liberalism to this day; the Christian individualist who doubted solutions that didn’t rehabilitate dignity.  And what Jesse Jackson likes to call the “plaster saint” King, the one whose message was simple enough to condense onto those “peace, justice, jobs” t-shirts I used to see in Selma: he has never existed, except at commemorative events.

Jennifer O'Connell: The March on Washington’s legacy is the power of choice

A black conservative reflects on the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington.

O'CONNELL: The Washington Times:

We are only a few weeks away from the 50-year anniversary of the March on Washington. Blacks in America, along with the rest of the nation are appropriately reflecting on what that March meant for Civil Rights, how far (or not) we have come in meeting the goals set by our forbears, and how we can continue to honor that legacy.

Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/my-orbit/2013/aug/16/oconnell-march-washingtons-legacy-power-choice/#ixzz2d85DQiQy Follow us: @wtcommunities on Twitter

Anniversary March on Washington was a Democratic Party pep rally says Black Progressive Ajamu Baraka

Institute for Policy Studies fellow Ajamu Baraka said that once one of the main organizers of the March on Washington said that no criticism of President Obama's administration would be allowed, it became a pep rally for the president and the Democratic Party.

Quote of the Day

“The essence of America – that which really unites us — is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion – it is an idea — and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things. That it doesn’t matter where you came from but where you are going.” ― Condoleezza Rice

Anita Baker - Giving You The Best That I Got

A Different Kind of Division

ROSS DOUTHAT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: 

So America was divided by race in 1963 and it is divided by race today. But it is not divided in anything like the same way. And the case for optimism about racial polarization starts with what the fire hoses and bombs of ’63 signify about the difference between the civil rights era and our own.

 Then, the major issue facing black America was entirely zero sum: for Dr. King to win, Bull Connor had to lose. There was no potential common ground so long as segregation lasted. Jim Crow had to perish outright for African-Americans to move forward as Americans. And their white supremacist oppressors knew it, which is why they turned to state-sponsored violence and state-sanctioned terrorism to defend their system and way of life.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/opinion/sunday/douthat-a-different-kind-of-division.html?_r=0

GOP fought hard for civil rights bills in 1960s

GOP establishment was supportive of Civil Rights Legislation:

"I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet,  if necessary."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1965

The Civil Rights Act -- which is best known for barring discrimination in public accommodations -- passed the House on Feb. 10, 1964 by a margin of 290-130. When broken down by party, 61 percent of Democratic lawmakers voted for the bill (152 yeas and 96 nays), and a full 80 percent of the Republican caucus supported it (138 yeas and 34 nays). When the Senate passed the measure on June 19, 1964, -- nine days after supporters mustered enough votes to end the longest filibuster in Senate history -- the margin was 73-27.

Better than two-thirds of Senate Democrats supported the measure on final passage (46 yeas, 21 nays), but an even stronger 82 percent of Republicans supported it (27 yeas, 6 nays). The primary reason that Republican support was higher than Democratic support -- even though the legislation was pushed hard by a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson -- is that the opposition to the bill primarily came from Southern lawmakers.

 In the mid 1960s, the South was overwhelmingly Democratic -- a legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction, when the Republican Party was the leading force against slavery and its legacy. Because of this history, the Democratic Party in the 1960s was divided between Southern Democrats, most of whom opposed civil rights legislation, and Democrats from outside the South who more often than not supported it.

More: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/may/25/michael-steele/steele-says-gop-fought-hard-civil-rights-bills-196/

Civil Rights and the Conservative Movement

On April 4, 2008, mourners gathered at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York to memorialize William F. Buckley, Jr., who had died five weeks earlier. That same Friday, mourners one thousand miles away gathered at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to memorialize Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been murdered there exactly 40 years before.

The coincidence resonates. Drawing on exceptional rhetorical talents without ever being elected to public office, each man transformed the terrain where mere politicians clash. Buckley and King, born less than four years apart, both attained national prominence while still in their 20s. Buckley founded National Review in 1955; its first issue appeared two weeks before Rosa Parks set in motion the Montgomery bus boycott, which turned Dr. King into the nation's preeminent black leader. Buckley and King went on to forge the conservative and civil rights movements, respectively, each of which reshaped American politics in the second half of the 20th century.

These two political movements were not, as conceived, antagonists. In its formative years the conservative movement was preoccupied with defeating international Communism and reversing the New Deal, while the civil rights movement existed to end Jim Crow. Neither objective required opposing, or even noticing, the other. The elaboration of each movement's premises, however, quickly turned them into adversaries.

On the questions where the movements confronted each other directly the simplest judgment is that King was right and Buckley was wrong. Although Buckley's personal generosity and talent for friendship resulted in warm tributes from writers on the Left, such as John Judis and James Galbraith, the first item always cited to disparage his legacy was Buckley's record during the decade between the Montgomery bus boycott and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. "Buckley was not himself a bigot," Tim Noah wrote in Slate the day Buckley died, "but he was at best blind and at worst indifferent to the bigotry all around him, and there can be no question that he stood in the way of racial progress." In 2006 Noah's Slatecolleague, Daniel Gross, made the same point more heatedly:

At a time when a portion of the U.S. maintained a system of racial apartheid, Buckley and his magazine, time and time again, sided with the white supremacists. And in the decades since, I haven't seen any evidence that he and his many acolytes are sorry, or ashamed—or that they've ever engaged in anything like an honest reckoning with their intellectual complicity in segregation.

These blunt judgments are similar to the one delivered from within conservative ranks by Jonah Goldberg in 2002:

Conservatives should feel some embarrassment and shame that we are outraged at instances of racism now that it is easy to be. Conservatives...were often at best MIA on the issue of civil rights in the 1960s. Liberals were on the right side of history on the issue of race. And conservatives should probably admit that more often.

All of Buckley's writings are now available at Hillsdale College's website (www.hillsdale.edu/buckley). Through them runs the line Goldberg gently suggests, the one separating the ways conservatives avoided the campaign to end America's caste system, from the ways they impeded that campaign.

MORE: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1543/article_detail.asp

Meet Felix Haywood, age 92, San Antonio, Texas, Former Slave

Black Folks have come a mighty, mighty long way. If you don't believe it, listen to a former black slave from Texas.

 

There wasn’t no reason to run up North. All we had to do was but walk South, and we’d be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande. In Mexico you could be free. They didn’t care what color you was, black, white, yellow, or blue. Hundreds of slaves did go to Mexico and got on all right.” 

—Felix Haywood, age 92, San Antonio, Texas

Felix Haywood (B)

FELIX HAYWOOD is a temperamental and whimsical old Negro of San Antonio, Texas, who still sees the sunny side of his 92 years, in spite of his total blindness. He was born and bred a slave in St. Hedwig, Bexar Co., Texas, the son of slave parents bought inMississippiby his master, William Gudlow. Before and during the Civil War he was a sheep herder and cowpuncher. His autobiography is a colorful contribution, showing the philosophical attitude of the slaves, as well as shedding some light upon the lives of slave owners whose support of the Confederacy was not accompanied by violent hatred of the Union.

 

"Yes, sir, I'm Felix Haywood, and I can answer all those things that you want to know. But, first, let me ask you this: Is you all a white man, or is you a black man?"
"I'm black, blacker than you are," said the caller.

The eyes of the old blind Negro,—eyes like two murkey brown marbles—actually twinkled. Then he laughed:

"No, you ain't. I knowed you was white man when you comes up the path and speaks. I jus' always asks that question for fun. It makes white men a little insulted when you dont know they is white, and it makes niggers all conceited up when you think maybe they is white."

And there was the key note to the old Negro's character and temperament. He was making a sort of privileged game with a sportive twist out of his handicap of blindness.

As the interviewer scribbled down a note, the door to the little shanty on Arabella Alley opened and a backless chair was carried out on the porch by a vigorous old colored woman. She was Mrs. Ella Thompson,[Pg 131] Felix' youngest sister, who had known only seven years of slavery. After a timid "How-do-you-do," and a comment on the great heat of the June day, she went back in the house. Then the old Negro began searching his 92 years of reminiscences, intermixing his findings with philosophy, poetry and prognostications.

"It's a funny thing how folks always want to know about the War. The war weren't so great as folks suppose. Sometimes you didn't knowed it was goin' on. It was the endin' of it that made the difference. That's when we all wakes up that somethin' had happened. Oh, we knowed what was goin' on in it all the time, 'cause old man Gudlow went to the post office every day and we knowed. We had papers in them days jus' like now.

"But the War didn't change nothin'. We saw guns and we saw soldiers, and one member of master's family, Colmin Gudlow, was gone fightin'—somewhere. But he didn't get shot no place but one—that was in the big toe. Then there was neighbors went off to fight. Some of 'em didn't want to go. They was took away (conscription). I'm thinkin' lots of 'em pretended to want to go as soon as they had to go.

"The ranch went on jus' like it always had before the war. Church went on. Old Mew Johnson, the preacher, seen to it church went on. The kids didn't know War was happenin'. They played marbles, see-saw and rode. I had old Buster, a ox, and he took me about plenty good as a horse. Nothin' was different. We got layed-onto(whipped) time on time, but gen'rally life was good—just as good as a sweet potato. The only misery I had was when a black spider bit me on the ear. It swelled up my head and stuff came out. I was plenty sick and Dr. Brennen, he took good care of me. The whites always took good care of people when they was sick. Hospitals couldn't do[Pg 132] no better for you today.... Yes, maybe it was a black widow spider, but we called it the 'devil biter'.

"Sometimes someone would come 'long and try to get us to run up North and be free. We used to laugh at that. There wasn't no reason to run up North. All we had to do was to walk, but walk South, and we'd be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande. In Mexico you could be free. They didn't care what color you was, black, white, yellow or blue. Hundreds of slaves did go to Mexico and got on all right. We would hear about 'em and how they was goin' to be Mexicans. They brought up their children to speak only Mexican.

"Me and my father and five brothers and sisters weren't goin' to Mexico. I went there after the war for a while and then I looked 'round and decided to get back. So I come back to San Antonio and I got a job through Colonel Breckenridge with the waterworks. I was handling pipes. My foreman was Tom Flanigan—he must have been a full-blooded Frenchman!

"But what I want to say is, we didn't have no idea of runnin' and escapin'. We was happy. We got our lickings, but just the same we got our fill of biscuits every time the white folks had 'em. Nobody knew how it was to lack food. I tell my chillen we didn't know no more about pants than a hawg knows about heaven; but I tells 'em that to make 'em laugh. We had all the clothes we wanted and if you wanted shoes bad enough you got 'em—shoes with a brass square toe. And shirts! Mister, them was shirts that was shirts! If someone gets caught by his shirt on a limb of a tree, he had to die there if he weren't cut down. Them shirts wouldn't rip no more'n buckskin.[Pg 133]

"The end of the war, it come jus' like that—like you snap your fingers."
"How did you know the end of the war had come?" asked the interviewer.
"How did we know it! Hallelujah broke out—
"'Abe Lincoln freed the nigger
With the gun and the trigger;
And I ain't goin' to get whipped any more.
I got my ticket,
Leavin' the thicket,
And I'm a-headin' for the Golden Shore!'

"Soldiers, all of a sudden, was everywhere—comin' in bunches, crossin' and walkin' and ridin'. Everyone was a-singin'. We was all walkin' on golden clouds.
Hallelujah!
"'Union forever,
Hurrah, boys, hurrah!
Although I may be poor,
I'll never be a slave—
Shoutin' the battle cry of freedom.'

"Everybody went wild. We all felt like heroes and nobody had made us that way but ourselves. We was free. Just like that, we was free. It didn't seem to make the whites mad, either. They went right on giving us food just the same. Nobody took our homes away, but right off colored folks started on the move. They seemed to want to get closer to freedom, so they'd know what it was—like it was a place or a city. Me and my father stuck, stuck close as a lean tick to a sick kitten. The Gudlows started us out on a ranch. My father, he'd round up cattle, unbranded cattle, for the whites. They was cattle that they belonged to, all right; they had gone to find water 'long the San Antonio River and the Guadalupe. Then the whites gave me and my father some cattle for our own. My father had his own brand, 7 B ), and we had a herd to start out with of seventy.[Pg 134]

"We knowed freedom was on us, but we didn't know what was to come with it. We thought we was goin' to get rich like the white folks. We thought we was goin' to be richer than the white folks, 'cause we was stronger and knowed how to work, and the whites didn't and they didn't have us to work for them anymore. But it didn't turn out that way. We soon found out that freedom could make folks proud but it didn't make 'em rich.

"Did you ever stop to think that thinking don't do any good when you do it too late? Well, that's how it was with us. If every mother's son of a black had thrown 'way his hoe and took up a gun to fight for his own freedom along with the Yankees, the war'd been over before it began. But we didn't do it. We couldn't help stick to our masters. We couldn't no more shoot 'em than we could fly. My father and me used to talk 'bout it. We decided we was too soft and freedom wasn't goin' to be much to our good even if we had a education."

The old Negro was growing very tired, but, at a request, he instantly got up and tapped his way out into the scorching sunshine to have his photograph taken. Even as he did so, he seemed to smile with those blurred, dead eyes of his. Then he chuckled to himself and said:

"'Warmth of the wind
And heat of the South,
And ripe red cherries
For a ripe, red mouth.'"
"Land sakes, Felix!" came through the window from sister Ella. "How you carries on! Don't you be a-mindin' him, mister."

Source: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30967/30967-h/30967-h.htm#Page_130

50 Years of a Dream

On the anniversary of the March on Washington, how has the outlook for white and black Americans changed?

From The Wall Street Journal:

The 50th anniversary of the August 1963 March on Washington is a moment to consider how close the U.S. has come to Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a nation where people are judged not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. About six in 10 whites told a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that America has achieved the Rev. King's dream. Blacks see it differently, though. Only one in five said the goal has been reached.

Attitudes toward race have changed enormously. "It's not respectable today to be a racist. It was perfectly acceptable in 1963," says Eleanor Holmes Norton, one of the behind-the-scenes organizers of the March and now the District of Columbia's representative in Congress.

By nearly every available economic metric, African-Americans are better off today than earlier generations were.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324108204579025291043459218.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

Jason Riley: Jobless Blacks Should Cheer Background Checks

Research suggests that employers who use them are less likely to racially discriminate.

The Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration took one on the chin earlier this month when a federal court ruled that companies may use criminal-background checks in hiring without being guilty of racial discrimination. Employers are thrilled about the decision, obviously. Less obvious is that the black unemployed, whose numbers have swelled under President Obama, also have reason to cheer.

The case dates to 2009, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Freeman Co., an event management firm. The EEOC alleged that the company's criminal-background checks for job applicants discriminated against blacks, who in general are more likely than other groups to have criminal histories.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324747104579022983043566454.html?KEYWORDS=JASON+L+RILEY

Artur Davis - The Right and Wrong Kind of Working Class Appeal

Yes, it is possible for Republicans to craft an appeal that is friendly to blue collar, downscale whites that does not amount to warmed over race-baiting. From this blog to thoughtful conservatives like Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat, the point has been made repeatedly that a pro working class message actually ought to bolster Republicans with blacks and Latinos, and that a renewed emphasis on upward mobility should resonate with whites as well as minorities caught in the tow of economic anxiety.

But to be fair about it, there is also a version of a white working class pitch that does looks pretty much exactly like thinly disguised backlash politics. It plays out when the argument against immigration reform transitions to warnings about alien cultures convoluting our national identity; when the GOP’s most conspicuous discretionary spending cuts would be food stamps; when virtually every complaint of racial discrimination is dismissed as professional activism or “divisiveness”; and when the outrage over government assistance seems most strident when the recipients are perceived (often wrongly) to be black or brown.

Therein, another dilemma for Republicans during this period of reevaluation: any serious strategy requires Republicans to go well beyond drop-bys on black radio stations or college campuses, or ratcheting up the ad budget for black publications, to the heavier lift of separating conservatism from its excesses. Outreach that moves voting numbers must consist of a conservative vision more interested in closing gaps and inequality than in widening those divisions.

Dr. Elaina George - Obamacare: Smoke And Mirrors

Dr Elaina George is a Board Certified Otolaryngologist. She graduated from Princeton University and received her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. 

 

The Affordable Care Act is the most recent and far reaching effort by the government to control healthcare in America. Our system has been the envy of the world with both clinical and research innovation at the heart of its foundation. What made our healthcare system exceptional was the fact that it was based on free enterprise. Doctors were free to practice medicine under the guidelines set forth by their Hippocratic Oath and patients were free to seek treatment from physicians of their choice. Initially it was very simple and affordable – the independent private physician had both a moral/ethical and a fiduciary responsibility to the patient. The doctor patient relationship was sacrosanct and there was no third party middle man.

Since 1948, when the United Nations created the World Health Organization (WHO) there has been an inexorable movement towards centralization of the power to take decisions away from the individual  and give them to the government in the form of regulation and mandates. This model was adopted readily by countries and is the under pinning of socialized medicine. The US was notably the only western country to hold out. However, that changed in1965 when Medicare was passed as part of the Social Security amendments. Medicare was set up as a federal program that provided socialized medicine for America’s seniors.

• Just like Obamacare, it was initially sold to Americans as a government program that would ‘take care’ of Americans. It would make the Government the benefactor, the caregiver, and the savior absolving Americans from personal responsibility – all you would have to do is put your faith and money in the government and everything would be taken care of with nothing to worry about.
•  Just like Obamacare, Medicare was drafted by bureaucrats and politicians who were more interested in concentrating power and controlling the purse strings, not providing true healthcare.
• Just like Obamacare, there were no doctors or patients involved with the crafting of the legislation; and therefore, there was no one who was a true advocate for the patient.

Over the years, Medicare has devolved into a bankrupt, bloated, and wasteful system that has been a piggy bank for Congress (e.g., Congress removed 700 billion dollars from the Medicare trust fund set aside for patient care to help fund Obamacare). Although the costs for seniors have increased in the form of higher deductibles, there has been a steady decline in access and treatment options. There is nothing to suggest that money taken for Obamacare will do anything more than add additional money to their slush fund. For those who argue that healthcare will improve, they should realize that under Obamacare, Medicare reimbursements to hospices will increase 1% while those to hospitals will fall  - making it hard to argue that healthcare in this new system will not emphasize rationing and palliative care to keep costs down.

Black Conservatives vs. the Republican Party Of Virginia

If Republicans expect to win back the White House in 2016, they'll probaly need to win back the State of Virgina. The Democrat's have now won Virginia twice in a row. According to exit polls reported by The New York Times, Mitt Romney carried 61 percent of the white vote in Virginia, Obama carried 93 percent of the black vote, 64 percent of the Hispanic vote and 66 percent of the Asian vote.

With such dismal outcomes one would think the Republican Party Of Virginia would be trying to reverse this trend. The article below, from Virginia Black Conservatives, seems to indicate that they have learned nothing from the past election. The Republican Party Of Virginia apparently cant event hold on to its black conservative supporters.

How pathetic!

And So It’s Come to This….

 

By Carl Tate

A few weeks ago I was invited to attend a roundtable of African-American conservatives with gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli. This is standard fare in my world, every Republican candidate throws this particular bone out to black conservatives, we sit and listen while the candidate promises us the world and we usually don’t see him until 1 or 2 years later at a reception or something. I’ve been to hundreds of these things. But the gentleman who extended the invitation to me let me know that he was told not to invite me because I had been critical of Mr. Cuccinelli earlier this year.

So even though I have devoted 20 years of my life to volunteering and supporting Republican candidates, going door to door for them, passing out literature for them, monitoring polls for them, speaking on their behalf and working for them, I’m apparently now not good enough to attend a meeting of black conservatives with them? Even though the meeting consisted of fence sitters and conservative Democrats? But a former political appointee of a Republican Presidential administration was nearly not invited? Let that sink in.

And that’s just my own personal story, there are many other black Republicans in this state, some who have come forward already, others who haven’t because they still hope this party will live up to its promises. But as for me, I’m done with the Republican Party and her candidates. Effective immediately. Now I am not declaring my support for the Democratic Party and its candidates for statewide office. The Democratic Party does not represent my values and as it goes won’t for a very, very long time. And I still plan on continuing to fight for the issues that are most important to me, the sanctity of life, education reform and the like, just not as a flunky of the Republican Party. If Republican candidates want my support they’ll have to ask.

Read more: http://vablackconservatives.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/and-so-its-come-to-this/

Quote of the Day

“Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.” ― Josephine Baker

Dr. Anthony Bradley - American Evangelical Protestantism For The 21-Century

American pluralism is not a problem per se, but the diversity of worldviews current in the country provide unique and new opportunities for unity in ways never experienced before in our nation’s history. Evangelical Protestants have had very easy lives in the American story and one could argue that they may have taken their “most favored religion” status for granted which leads to unwise cooperative efforts with government. So much so that now politicians feel too comfortable proposing legislation that attempts to tell Christians and their organizations how they can or cannot put their beliefs into practice, as if politicians have such authority to speak into the life of the church.

Why We Belong is a clarion call for a new way forward. What is needed is a space to foster the kind of unity proposed in the book in local contexts in cities and towns across America. This type of multi-denominational discourse should be the new norm (as I tried to model in my latest book on Protestantism and issues of race). In the last chapter of Why We Belong, David Dockery makes several good recommendations regarding how Protestant denominations can foster more cooperation and solidarity.

Read more: http://blog.acton.org/archives/59081-american-evangelical-protestantism-in-the-21-century.html

Ali Akbar - I Don’t Want To Have a Conversation About Race…

Forget a conversation, let’s have an understanding.

 

I’m an African-American (also Arab, bi-racial) who happens to be a conservative. It’s only relevant because it pertains to my qualifications on tolerance. See, I get to hear the harmful rhetoric from liberals who believe I’ve bleached my skin color in exchange for a lower tax rate and I get to hear conservatives, most of the time in ignorance, speaks to matters they do not understand.

Honestly, it’s led to a lot of pain. Not just for me, but for so many young African-Americans who don’t see the barriers of their parents and have all the aspirations that every child deserves to dream.

It curls my stomach when we start having these “conversations on race” because I’m forced to watch ignorance on display. If you were going to have an intelligent conversation with someone on a subject, wouldn’t you first make yourself familiar with the common facts? This isn’t done by most conservatives or most liberals.

Read more: http://aliakbar.org/blog/2013/07/understanding-black-people/

Ghetto Culture - Random Thoughts

Black people who defend ghetto culture are either wealthy enough to avoid it or they are perpetrators of the chaos. No one who lives in a community subjected to the crime, awful schools and bad business environment can ignore the problems. It is not comforting to hear it or easy to face it, but it is real. Deal with it.

Elites have the luxury of looking at the problem of ghetto culture from a distance. They can study the problem, discuss it and find lofty solutions that have little to do with the way people behave. Some defend this culture as a way to outwardly connect with their "blackness." It doesn't matter how many lives are destroyed by a broken culture as long as they are not called "sellouts."

They blindly deny the expansive gulf between the pervasive, toxic modern urban ghetto culture and decent black historical culture. One generation had Medgar Evers as an example of manhood. This generation has Diddy. Nice trade. (No, Hillary, it's not Medger.)

Read more: http://www.kennethdurden.com/2013/08/ghetto-culture-random-thoughts.html

Hollywood Round Table - Civil Rights, ca. 1963

In this motion picture film, Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, Joseph Mankiewicz, James Baldwin and David Schoenbrun discuss the Civil Rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963.

 

Samuel Goldman - Race and the Right

Jamelle Bouie argues that conservatives are simultaneously obsessed with and oblivious to race. Citing Glenn Beck’s accusation that President Obama hates white people and some conservatives’ public delight in the Zimmerman verdict, Bouie contends that conservatives have adopted a distorted and distorting understanding of racism according to which “anyone who treats race as a social reality is a racist.” It follows that:

Because Obama acknowledges race as a force in American life—and because he even suggests that there are racists among us—he becomes the “real racist,” a construction designed to give conservatives moral high ground, while allowing them to insult Obama. After all, for them, “racist” is the worst accusation in American life.

Bouie is right to criticize the naivëté about race that Dan McCarthy mentioned in his defense of Jack Hunter, which is characteristic of talk radio and other political entertainment. But he misunderstands the conceptual frame that many conservatives apply to these issues.

Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/race-and-the-right/