To Black People, from a “Deplorable”: Let’s be on the Same Side Again

We deplorable Republicans would like to say, after all this time — almost a hundred years — that it’s well past time. We invite you to come back home.

Your community didn’t start voting democrat in the 1960’s when the political parties supposedly “switched”. History is messy, and the truth is sometimes inconvenient, so you might not have heard this. No, the black community started voting democrat in the 1930’s in the days of your great-great grandparents, and the Democrats were still openly the party of Jim Crow and the KKK. Your ancestors knew they were making a deal with the devil, and knew the risks, but felt they had to. Whether it was correct or not, the Democrats, with all their racism, seemed like the best bet for surviving the great depression.

They may or may not have helped much with the great depression, but they certainly didn’t help you.

The Republican Party is not just “our house but you are welcome in it”. You have always had a place here. You helped us build it in the first place. It has always been your home as much as ours. We were sad when you left, and we’ve been missing something as long as you’ve been gone.

During the recent presidential debate, they asked about “the talk”, but that was the wrong question. They always ask the wrong questions, and so the answers never fix anything. What they should have asked is: Why, if the Democratic Party is helping black people, are all the worst places for a black American to live in cities that have been run by Democrats for decades? Why is the black community hurting more, in many ways, now, with the Democrats as your supposed allies than you were when the Democrats were openly your enemy?

Please come home.

They tell you that Republicans say things that sound OK, but it’s all dog whistles and we are secretly racist. Would you like to know what we actually talk about behind closed doors? When we won’t get fired, or beat up, or kicked off social media, we argue with each other about whether the democratic party is hurting you accidentally through a combination of good intentions and bad ideas, or whether they are doing it on purpose.

I’ll tell you what we thing the real answer to the right question is:

The black community is strong, and it’s always been strong. You’ve never needed special laws and programs, racial quotas or affirmative action. All you ever needed is to not be held down or sabotaged.

When you and we together — finally — convinced the Democratic Party to STOP IT with the Jim Crow laws, the segregation, and the lynchings and the Klan; they replaced them — maybe well intentioned — replaced them with laws and programs that undermined and eroded the black family. That same black family that was a pillar that kept your ancestors standing tall through one of the longest and darkest racial storms that anyone has fought through — you came out with your head high and with dignity and honor. That same family, that helped you survive it all, is now crumbling. The traditional family is crumbling in other communities too, and it’s hurting them as well, but it is disproportionately happening to you.

If you grew up in a home with both parents present, and neither was abusive, and neither was addicted to anything, then you experienced a very different America than those who didn’t. If you didn’t have those things, and you were black, then you had more in common with a white child growing up in a broken home than you did with a black child growing up in a whole one. Maybe you didn’t know it at the time; the shows on the TV and the slang and the clothing styles were probably different, but otherwise… All of the things we casually assume come from racism — the despair, the poverty, the poor education, the violent encounters with the police — they all track more closely to broken homes than they do to skin color.

The solution is to undo the damage, and yes it will take time. But the solution is not to bring the color of each other’s skin back to the center of how we see and treat each other. We fought too long against that, and we almost got rid of it.

We need to go back to building a world where we see each other as humans first, with a spark of divinity in all of us; Americans second; third an individual — a cubs fan, or lakers, a young aspiring rapper, or skater, an author, or someone who gave the best years of their life caring for those they loved most, or whatever the case may be — an individual third; and a black/white/brown/Asian person somewhere farther, farther down the line.

There will always be the tendency to categorize people based on skin color or other unimportant differences, divide us up, put us into separate boxes, and treat us differently. That’s an ugly part of human nature that we can’t erase, so we will never completely win. But if we always fight against it rather than give in, we can keep it from taking over our society again.

Now is a good time to mention the “party switch”. It’s only half a lie — the Republicans have always been the ones that say we’re all the same, and we should treat everyone the same. That was the reason we fought against slavery and segregation — if we’re all created equal, how can they say that some are free and some are slaves? Now we fight against affirmative action and critical race theory on the same basis. We haven’t switched at all. The Democrats have always been the ones who think you can divide people into categories and treat them accordingly. What has switched since the 1960s is who Democrats say should go into the “good people” box, and who goes into the bad.

They want more special race-based programs, more projects, more quotas, more racial laws and hiring. More promises. More of everything that has been offered to your community since 1960s. We want your children to grow up to be doctors and engineers and scientists and lawyers — and to drive fancy cars and to live in big houses.

The way we can achieve it is to make an America where nobody cares very much about skin color, while at the same time setting up society to strengthen, rather than undermine, families. We also need to make sure it’s easy for everyone to get ahead — kind of like the first three years of Trump’s presidency. We had the lowest unemployment for minorities ever recorded (and us “racist”, “deplorable” Republicans were cheering about that on the rooftops). Working and middle class people (of all colors) were starting to pull ahead for the first time in decades. We’d like to keep that going. There are other things that might help also (school choice, prison reform, deescalating the war on drugs), and they’re worth looking into, but mostly…

It’s been a very long time, but now is a good time. It’s always been yours as much as it is our. Please come back home.