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JustAnotherGen

(31,683 posts)
14. Not necessarily
Sun Jun 8, 2014, 08:16 AM
Jun 2014

Yes - our grandparents were staunch Republicans. But I know my grandfather started voting D when LBJ was up. That shift to solid D started in the 70's. There are still some in the solid R category - but lets face it . . . Allen West doesn't share the black elite background. Read the book Our Kind Of People by Lawrence Otis Graham. A family member of mine is quoted in there - and he shows the sharp difference between the African Methodist Church and the Evangelical Baptist Church goers in that book.

When I went to visit Spleman I rejected it as the upper classwoman I was tagged with were snotty and stuck up about two girls I befriended that weekend - one from the Bronx and one from Chicago. It was made very clear what was expected of legacy "ladies" and I was told what Sorority I wouldn't have to pledge. This was NOT my grandmother's S.C. It wasn't how I was raised.

I ended up at Niagara and it was a blessing. There I met the poor white girl from Appalachia, the 22 year old Freshman woman thr had grown up in Apartheid, the kids from 'da Bronx, the children of French Canadian immigrants etc etc. It was a blessing.

However - if the Democratic Party as represented at DU wants to piss on my back and tell me it's raining I'll start voting my economic interests. Leave poor minority folks behind, tell the LGBT community things aren't a big deal, tell women they are behaving hysterically - that's how you create sell outs.

It's what the Republican Party did in the sixtes, they doubled down when they got into bed with the likes of James Dobson and Gary Bauer in the 1980's and now we have one hell of a cultural war being instigated by the evangelical Right and they are gunning for the HBCUs.

It's funny - these two threads I read last night I read - what everyone has done for the black folks. Here's the thing about majority of the HBC's folks I know -

We have a stronger get down and kiss the ass of our ancestors mentality than we do the civil rights warriors.

My affluence as a single woman was directly related to efforts of my great grandfather - a child of Reconstruction who lived his entire life in rural Alabama and never had less than $100K in the bank - and my grandfather that except for his time in Atlanta at a HBC - lived in the same place and died with a net worth of $16 Million dollars.

Know what? They earned that. Without anyone's help and in spite of this rotten vicious country's treatment of them.

So before you throw around sell out - make sure you understand the "Our Kind Of People" subculture. The kind of people who give large sums to these schools and the UNCF because we KNOW that there but for the right womb went I.

Don't ever throw people like Allen West or Herman Cain or even Clarence Thomas in with people like my father (Tuskeegee) or my uncles (H and M respectively). Those aren't their kind of guys. They didn't have to be accepted by white elites because they were the black elites.

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