My boy Cobb's been on a move to integrate the Republican Party for some time now. The number he's pushing for is around 10-12 percent, which is about the amount that Nixon got if I recall correctly. I believe that Cobb's goal is a worthwhile one even though my colleague Paul Frymer's work on the subject is pretty definitive for me.
But I'm reminded of JMS' Babylon 5--until the dawn of the 21st century teledrama THE best television program I've ever seen.
TO make a 5 season epic short, human beings are engaged in an intergalactic war between two god like races....the Vorlons (Who are you?) and the Shadows (What do you want?). JMS plays the banana in the tailpipe trick in that for much of the epic, the viewer is firmly convinced that the Shadows are actually the antagonists of all antagonists. Their appearance is sinister, their actions are violent and evil, and the characters that represent them on screen have few redeeming characteristics. Only near the end of the epic do we become aware that the battle between the Vorlons and the Shadows is a battle of dueling philosophies--the Shadows believe in growth through conflict, the Vorlons in growth through order and control.
Neither race gives a damn about humanity. And in the end the humans make a choice to take them both out.
We're the humans in this scenario. Neither the dems nor the gop give a fuck about us. The GOP scapegoats us to get the nascar dads, the Dems pay off Jackson (and soon Sharpton) to get us to the polls in exchange for high end trinkets.
In my most elitist PhD having tone I say this: fuck them BOTH.
We need a set of core policies that move people to the point where both parties have to grapple with them. Then it wouldn't MATTER what party id black people have on either the aggregate or the individual level. Because both parties will be dancing to our tune. Or they will be destroyed.
A meme like "free college education" can be easily touted as democratic policy (gives the locked out a chance to compete) and a republican policy (rewards individual initiative and builds wealth). Bickering over party id is nothing more than set-claiming. And I've done my fair share of it over the past several years. But I'm trying to move beyond that. And not just because it is a new year. Though I've unofficially changed my birthday to Jan. 1, I've never been one for resolutions.
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