by Richard Rowe
The Leadership Circle
(email to: rrowe84@aol.com)
 We should need no further convincing of why we should not continue to vote for the "lesser of two evils," or for the continuation of the status quo. I stop wasting my precious vote years ago, and I continue to vote in every election, but I have grown tired of trying to choose between Twiddley Dee and Twiddley Dumb. Over the past 20 years, very few candidates of either party have said or done much to earn our votes. They just don't get it and neither do we.
It appears that most Black voters are seduced by what use to be referred to as "clientage politics" or the process of black dependency on white friends. We see this played out ad infinitum and ad nausea by black voters, most black elected officials, the black clergy and black civil rights organizations. A few symbolic things like cabinet appointments and obligatory genuflections appear to be sufficient palliatives to pledge our allegiance and our precious votes to the Democratic Party time and time again. We are still fixated on "non-economic liberalism" (i.e., civil rights handouts) and not on true African American political /economic power.
Furthermore, we are so wedded to the Democratic Party - even though they have used, misused and abused us in each and every election - both locally and nationally. When will we ever learn the undeniable truths about American politics? As one of my favorite social critic recently stated, and I am paraphrasing him, we have lavished unconditional support perennially upon Democratic office seekers and gotten for it what one invariably gets for unconditional support: NOTHING.
Our lack of courage, self/group respect, self/group confidence, mis-education and inexplicable logic makes us vulnerable to gestures and microtokens. Our appetite for substance and intellectual stimulation appears to be waning, and we now find comfort and solace in sound bites, clichés and trivial discourses, a la most debates. Across the country, very few candidates of either party running for any office seldom say anything to earn our precious votes, or our allegiance. Outside of affirmative action gestures and minimally salutary notions for certain entitlement programs, neither party has anything to offer us but more rhetoric. Don't we get it? Tragically, our black political leadership, black clergy and the NAACP will once again push for total support for the Democratic Party - the party that has championed "non-economic liberalism" for the black community for decades. How does one define insanity…doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
The quintessential scholar, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois stated in 1916 that "between the two great parties (Democrats and Republicans), as parties, there is little to choose, and if there is no candidate from either party who truly supports our interest unequivocally, then the Negro must nominate a candidate of their own and give that candidate their solid vote." He said that back in 1916! So where do we go from here and when will we decide to stop wasting our precious black vote?
What should we do this year and in future elections? Who should we vote for if Twiddley Dee and Twiddley Dumb are our only options? I will attempt to address these two questions and more in Part II of this article, which will appear in next month's edition of AGBM.
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