Blacks and the Democratic Party
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will almost certainly be rejected by the very voters whose fundamental political leanings are most close ly aligned with the “Scandinavian social democratic” model on which Sanders has based his career.
Black voting behavior over the past two generations all but guarantees they will back the national Demo cratic candidate they perceive as most likely to defeat the Republicans—the “White Man’s Party.” White supremacy and the rule of capital in the U.S. are but tressed, electorally, by two pillars: (1) the bifurcation of the major party system into a White Man’s Party, whose organizing principle is white supremacy, and another party that is somewhat more inclusive of Blacks and other “minorities,” and (2) control of both parties by capital.
For Blacks, the Democratic Party is a trap within a trap. If the overarching, perceived necessity is to block the Republican/White Man’s Party at every electoral juncture, then Blacks see no option but to huddle un der the Democratic tent, despite the fact that it is, like the Republicans, a Rich Man’s Party.
It is a politics of fear, born of generations of raw ter ror at the hands of the White Man’s Party. The modern Democratic Party, like the post-Civil War Republican Party, is not a haven, but an enclosure, which Blacks fear to exit. At root, Black participation in the Demo cratic Party is not a matter of free allegiance, but the perception that there is no other effective means to hold back the barbarians of the White Man’s Party.
In practice, it is institutionalized group panic, a stam pede every four years. Blacks are drawn into the jaws of the Democratic Party, not by ideological affinity, but in search of protection from the Republicans. This is an entirely different dynamic than an alignment based on thoughtful examination of political platforms. ...
Under these stilted circumstances, the Democratic candidate’s actual political positions become nearirrelevant to the Black primary voter, compared to the candidate’s perceived ability to win a national elec tion.
When the voter is seeking protection from what is seen as the greater, more racist evil, rather than searching for a candidate and party that takes posi tions more aligned with the Black political world view, independent politics goes out the window. In deed, independent, leftist electoral campaigns can be viewed as a going AWOL from the fight, or worse, col laborating with the Republican enemy.
Blacks voted for Jesse Jackson in his 1984 and ’88 primary campaigns, but he opted out of an indepen dent run for president, preferring to remain in the role of “power broker” within the Democratic enclo sure. It’s not likely that Black voters would have sup ported Jackson in an independent race, anyway.
When Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter from the Left, in 1980, his effort collapsed largely from lack of support from Black elected officials, who stuck with the Georgia peanut farmer even after he had shown himself to be a deeply conservative politician (a founding “neoliberal”) whose austerity policies opened the door to Ronald Reagan.
The Black Radical Tradition is real and enduring, but it is not expressed through participation in the Democratic Party. Rather, entrapment in the Demo cratic Party enclosure (within the larger Rich Man’s duopoly) grotesquely warps Black political behavior. This distortion profoundly diminishes the prospects for progressive electoral activity in the United States.
It is true that the Democrats would collapse were it not for the Black core of the party. It is also prob able that that would be a good thing. What is certain is that the Democratic Party oozes out of every orifice of Black civic society like a stinking pus, sapping the self-determinist vitality of the people and transform ing every Black social structure and project into a Democratic Party asset.
The task of Black activists and their allies is to ensure that our first and last hope—movement politics— once again becomes central to the struggle, so that we can, as Dr. Cornel West puts it, “break the back of fear.” This will require the most intense internal struggle among Black Americans to break the chains that bind us to that vector of fear, the Democratic Party. n BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen [email protected].
SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 2016 7