Are Democrats really the champions of minorities?

Following Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, Hillary Clinton declared that any Republican opposition to President Barack Obama’s justice nominee is because of racism. Proof of this supposed racism isn’t necessary because Democrats have been doing it for years: Portraying their party as the enlightened, loving group that wants to help the black population, and Republicans as the heartless bigots. But depending on your definition of the word, just how are Democrats “helping” black Americans – or any American for that matter?

Ever since Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law, Democrats have represented themselves as the champions of the black race. But they never publicize the fact that it was Republicans who had to convince LBJ to sign the 1964 legislation, which passed with a higher percentage of Republican over Democratic votes.

Today’s Democrats also bury their own history that documents their fierce opposition to every law or amendment from 1862 to 1964 that would abolish slavery, lynching, and obstacles to citizenship for black people. Instead, it was the Democrats who gave us Dred Scott, the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws, and who opposed school desegregation.

Citing the “Southern Strategy”, some argue that ideologies have shifted, meaning today’s Republicans actually hold the racist views that history’s Democrats did. But they cannot speak for me and every other conservative Republican who identifies with Republicans precisely for their historical record on helping black citizens gain freedom and equality, and for conservative Republican support for the smaller government, lower taxes and border security that open the way toward justice and opportunity for all Americans.

Despite Democrats’ deplorable historical record, what about now? There is no doubt racism exists regardless of political affiliation or race itself, but what’s being addressed here is the co-opting of an issue in order to win votes. So what exactly are Democrats doing that helps the black American, or any American for that matter?

Just a few points to consider:

War on Poverty: While Republicans absolutely support help for the truly down and out, before Johnson’s War on Poverty launched in 1964 (about which he was famously reported as saying would cause black people to “vote Democrat for 200 years”), the black poverty rate was in decline. It began rising steadily after 1964’s launch of massive welfare, and then seven years after President Bill Clinton signed the Republican-sponsored Welfare Reform Act of 1996 which stipulated a work requirement, the U.S. Census Bureau reported black poverty declined to its lowest levels in history.

Under President Obama, however, who essentially gutted the welfare work requirement, black poverty in particular has again risen, according to Pew Research Center, from 25.8 percent in 2009 to 27.2% as of 2014, and welfare recipients in general are at an all-time high, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Worse is the devastating changes we’ve seen in the black family since 1964. Despite good intentions, welfare programs act as disincentives for parents to stay together. A single mother will receive far more from welfare if there is no employed husband. Over time, welfare effectively renders the father irrelevant.

The effect on black families is clear: As of 1964, 82% of black citizens lived in married, two-parent households. Today, the OECD reports that an astonishing 72% of black children are born into single-parent households, which, according to a 2009 U.S. Census Bureau report, significantly increases a child’s probability of living in poverty.

Unemployment/economy: While Obama likes to present himself as the anti-Reagan answer to, well, Reaganomics, the fact is that President Reagan reduced the maximum tax rate on job creators by 60%; Obama has increased it by 17%. According to a Cato Institute study, under Reagan, adult black unemployment fell by 20%, but under Obama, it has increased by 42%; black teenage unemployment fell by 16% under Reagan, but has risen by 56% under Obama. Rather than scale back on the policies that are worsening things, however, Obama remains steadfast in his support for increased regulations, taxation and welfare spending.

 Minimum wage laws: For a long period after the Civil War, white unemployment exceeded black unemployment. That changed with the first federal minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which was used openly to price black workers out of the job market. Today, it continues to do harm because wage laws can only set wages, they cannot guarantee that employers can afford to offer jobs at those wages, which means young, low-skilled workers are less likely to get such jobs. In fact, the Employment Policies Institute reports that from 2007-2009, young black Americans lost more jobs because of minimum wage hikes than from the recession. 

Illegal immigration: Though black citizens face higher unemployment than whites, many Democrats actively encourage open borders and amnesty for illegal workers (a.k.a. potential Democratic voters). As attorney Peter Kirsanow states, “The obvious question is whether there are sufficient jobs in the low-skilled labor market for both African-Americans and illegal immigrants. The answer is no.”

Voter ID laws: Despite accusations of racism, a recent Rasmussen poll of various races found that 8 out of 10 voters support showing photo ID when voting to reduce voter fraud. If anything is racist, it’s depicting black people as incapable of obtaining photo ID – or that they’ve never withdrawn money from a bank, written a check at a store, or traveled on an airplane, all of which require photo ID.

Decimated cities: Look at the worst cities across America, including Detroit and Flint. Who has controlled them for decades? Democrats. Yet Democrats continue to blame Republicans for minorities trapped in these decaying communities while promoting the very Democratic policies that have led to their ruin. 

Crime: Every year thousands of black people are murdered by black people, predominantly in the inner cities run by Democrats. But rather than focusing on this very real problem, Democrats, like President Obama, prefer to sensationalize random stories that involve blacks being killed by non-blacks, such as the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, MO.   

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is campaigning on the idea of “systemic racism”. Besides promising “investments in education, healthcare and jobs” to combat the issue with little detail on what she actually would do, Hillary talks emotionally about the broken system, noting that “too many encounters with law enforcement end tragically.” Of course demonizing the police helps Democrats in their push for a nationalized police force, while the black people they claim to care about remain exposed to high rates of black-on-black murder. 

Abortion: Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, who notoriously launched the “Negro Project” to reduce the black population. Today, the Guttmacher Institute reports that nearly 80% of Planned Parenthood abortion mills are strategically planted in minority communities, and abortion is the leading cause of death among black people. Yet Democrats happily support funding Planned Parenthood with over one million dollars daily in taxpayer money. Apparently not all "Black Lives Matter". 

Disagreeing with a position based on principle isn’t racist or wrong. What is wrong is blaming Republicans for the problems brought on by Democratic policies and then calling Republicans racists for disagreeing with bad policies, all in order to court voter support. Isn’t it time we start holding Democrats accountable to this?