Risk is an inherent part of politics, but few risks carry as much potential cost as the one Baton Rouge Judge Luke Lavergne recently took. In a historic move, Lavergne became the first Louisiana black elected official to leave the Democratic party for the GOP.
“If you are labeled a Democrat you will be for more taxes, more spending by the federal government and more giveaways and you will continue to hold black people in poverty, and, as far as I’m concerned, enslavement economically,” Lavergne said in The Advocate.
Many believe that one cannot be both black and a Republican. Unfortunately, lies gradually become truth as they are continually repeated. For years, the Democratic party and a few elite black leaders have spouted the lie that the Republican party is a racist organization that seeks to discriminate against minorities.
These people ignore history. It was the Lincoln, the first Republican president, who ensured blacks would no longer be held in shackles. It was the Democratic party who filibustered the Civil Rights Act which could not have passed without the support of Congressional Republicans.
It is the Democrats who feature the only former member of the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S. Senate, Robert Byrd. This is the man who accused Martin Luther King of unleashing “destructive forces” upon the country. He voted against both black nominees to the Supreme Court. In 2001, he used a racial slur on national TV. Byrd then used his stature in the Senate to lead the effort against the confirmation of the first black female secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, leading to the largest “no” vote against any secretary of state nominee since 1825.
Blacks that are willing to leave the plantation of the liberal Democratic party do so at a high cost. Conservatives such as Rice, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas and J.C. Watts are subjected to extraordinary condemnation from the left. No insult is left unsaid. Their “blackness” and intelligence is habitually questioned. Disparaging labels such as “Uncle Tom,” “Aunt Jemima” and “Brown Sugar” are acceptable names for black conservatives.
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Democrat Minority Leader, recently said on Meet the Press that, “I think (Clarence) Thomas has been an embarrassment to the court.”
This is your modern day Democratic party. They have formed an unholy alliance with self-proclaimed leaders such as Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton. To maintain their hold on power, they discourage blacks and other minorities from leaving the plantation by demonizing minority conservatives, leveling charges of racism and voter suppression against the Republican party and maintaining oppressive entitlement programs.
“The Democratic party has been giving this stuff away more and more each year and I think it has handicapped black folks in this country,” Lavergne said at a LSU College Republicans meeting last week. “Instead of being enslaved by the plantation masters of the South in the 1850’s, it’s now the Democratic party leadership. They are the plantation owners now.”
Despite the best efforts of the left, this plantation system is foundering as more members of the minority community are discovering their true values and opportunity lie in conservatism.
“A lot of people don’t know, but a majority of black people in this country are church going and conservative,” Lavergne said.
Younger minorities such as Southern College Republican President Maurice Wesley are striving to tear down the wall of misinformation and prejudice against minority conservatives.
“Older African Americans coined the phrase ‘Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket’ and we as the younger generation should actively diversify our ideologies so that we are not dependent solely on liberal democrats who claim that they and only they are looking out for us,” Wesley said.
It will take time and many more courageous risk-takers like Lavergne to free the hold that liberal Democrats have on the political allegiance and votes of minorities. For the sake of our country let us that this emancipation of the mind comes sooner than later.