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March 20, 2008
Dear Democrats
An Open Letter to the Democratic Party
By Lt. Colonel Frances Rice, U.S. Army Retired
"We, African American citizens of the United States, declare and assert:
Whereas in the early 1600's 20 African men and women were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship as slaves and from that tiny seed grew the poisoned fruit of plantation slavery which shaped the course of American development,
Whereas reconciliation and healing always begin with an apology and an effort to repay those who have been wronged,
Whereas the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices committed against African Americans during the past two hundred years, nor for the residual impact that those atrocities and practices and current soft bigotry of low expectations are having on us today,
Whereas the Democratic Party fought to expand slavery and, after the Civil War, established Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes and other repressive legislation that were designed to disenfranchise African Americans,
Whereas the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, and their primary goal was to intimidate and terrorize African American voters, Republicans who moved South to protect African Americans and any other whites who supported them,
Whereas, according to leading historians (both black and white), the horrific atrocities committed against African Americans during slavery and Reconstruction were financed, sponsored, and promoted by the Democratic Party and their Ku Klux Klan supporters,
Whereas from 1870 to 1930, in an effort to deny African Americans their civil rights and to keep African Americans from voting Republican, thousands of African Americans were shot, beaten, lynched, mutilated, and burned to death by Ku Klux Klan terrorists from the Democratic Party,
Whereas Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission,
Whereas the Democratic party has used racist demagoguery to deceive African Americans about the history of the Republican Party that: (a) started as the anti-slavery party in 1854, (b) fought to free African Americans from slavery, (c) designed Reconstruction, a ten-year period of unprecedented political power for African Americans, (d) passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution granting African Americans freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote, (e) passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 granting African Americans protection from the Black Codes and prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, (f) passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 granting African Americans protection from the Jim Crow laws, (g) established Affirmative Action programs to help African Americans proper with Republican President Richard Nixon's 1969 Philadelphia Plan that set the first goals and timetables and his 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act that made Affirmative Action Programs the law of our nation, and (h) never sponsored or launched a program, passed laws, or engaged in practices that resulted in the death of millions of African Americans,
Whereas Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka (a 1954 decision by Chief Justice Earl Warren who was appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower) was a landmark civil rights case that was designed to overturn the racist practices that were established by the Democratic Party,
Whereas after Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt received the vote of African Americans, he banned African American newspapers from the military shortly after taking office because he was convinced the newspapers were communists,
Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Law, opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was later criticized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for ignoring civil rights issues.
Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy authorized the FBI (supervised by his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy) to investigate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on suspicion of being a communist,
Whereas Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, made a 14-hour filibuster speech in the Senate in June 1964 in an unsuccessful effort to block passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and was heralded in April 2004 by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd as a senator who would have been a great leader during the Civil War,
Whereas when the 1964 Civil Rights Act came up for vote, Senator Al Gore, Sr. and the rest of the Southern Democrats voted against the bill,
Whereas in the House of Representatives only 61 percent of the Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act as compared to 80 percent of Republicans, and in the Senate only 69 percent of the Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, compared to 82 percent of the Republicans,
Whereas Democratic President Bill Clinton sent troops to Europe to protect the citizens of Bosnia and Kosovo while allowing an estimated 800,000 black Rwandans to be massacred in Africa, vetoed the welfare reform law twice before signing it, and refused to comply with a court order to have shipping companies develop an Affirmative Action Plan,
Whereas Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore created harmful racial division when he falsely claimed that the 2000 presidential election was "stolen" from him and that African Americans in Florida were disenfranchised, even though a second recount of Florida votes by the "Miami Herald" and a consortium of major news organizations confirmed that he lost the election, and a ruling by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declared that African Americans were not denied the right to vote,
Whereas the Democratic Party's soft bigotry of low expectations and social promotions have consigned African Americans to economic bondage and created a culture of dependency on government social programs,
Whereas the Democratic Party's use of deception and fear to block welfare reform, the faith-based initiative and school choice that would help African Americans prosper is consistent with the Democratic Party's heritage of racism that included sanctioning of slavery and kukluxery, a perversion of moral sentiment among leaders of the Democratic Party whose racist legacy bode ill until this generation of African Americans,
Now, therefore, for the above and other documented atrocities and accumulated wrongs inflicted upon African Americans, we demand a formal written apology and other appropriate remuneration from the leadership of the Democratic party.
Posted by LindaSoG at March 20, 2008 07:11 AM
Comments
YAY!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Stepperg at March 20, 2008 07:35 PM
Holy shit, but that's gonna leave a mark!
Posted by: me-sarge at March 20, 2008 09:27 PM
I'm not so sure this point of view is uncommon. My black friends are almost universally well-educated conservative professionals; free thinking people not afraid to question what, exactly, the Democrats have done for (to?) "black America" in the past 50 years and I would dare say not pleased with the conclusions.
Because Lt.Col Rice's point of view doesn't reflect the standard "party line" I don't expect to see it in the mainstream media.
There is a power structure desperately fighting to maintain itself. Its enemy is information and honest talk. They know that, but so do we.
Posted by: --jack at March 20, 2008 11:17 PM
Liberals have been rewriting history for years. It'll probably take courageous, black Republican women to set it straight. Dang, I wish she would run for office. And I'd like to see her on FOX with Hannity.
Posted by: Jimmy at March 21, 2008 01:18 AM
Years ago, in Dallas, I had a work colleague - a black man from Florida whose mother had named "Jeff Davis". After he and I (a white man) became friends, I asked him about his mother's sense of humor. He told me name was "Jeffrey", NOT "Jefferson"!
Jeff brought a copy of the Dallas Morning News to me one morning, slamming it on my desk. John Wiley Price (Dallas' own Al Sharpton) was on the front page. Jeff declared, "This man has a problem!" He went on to tell me how irritated he was when newspapers proclaimed this or that "truth" about the "Black community" and the leaders thereof. Davis said, "Price ain't my leader. I didn't vote for him and he don't represent my views."
Jeff Davis is an example of what the media and the Democrats don't want everyone to know about: a Black man who thinks for himself. The horror! /sarc/
Posted by: Stuart at March 21, 2008 09:25 AM
Linda, this is a room full of fresh air. Thank you.
From 1969 through 1972 I lived in an all black community, I have seen the same point of view expressed by some of my black friends, it's too bad most aren't that astute. Whether by chance or by choice, some of my neighbors were drug users, dealers, prostitutes and thieves, even a murder across the street. I never had a problem while there and had some very interesting characters visit my home. Most were sickened by their dependence on the government for all their needs. That experience motivated me to achieve, at least to my limitations, which are many.
I was fortunate to have worked with a Puerto Rican national for nearly 20 years who worked a 2 week on 2 week off schedule and commuted from Puerto Rico, he said he'd never move to the mainland and subject his family to the racisim professed by the American blacks.
Lt. Colonel Frances Rice is retired and we've got Condi Rice working full time for the UN. Even in her retirement Frances Rice has a better grasp on reality than Condi Rice will ever have. We need more like Lt. Colonel Frances Rice to speak out and reject the fallacy they are being fed by the Democrats.
Posted by: Jack at March 21, 2008 01:15 PM
Take Heed Hillary and OBama
Posted by: Jon Nickens at March 22, 2008 06:24 PM
Colonel Rice, don't hold your breath waiting for the Democrats to do any kind of apology unless they see big benefits in votes as well as cash.
They already feel they have the votes of the blacks in their pocket and thus they feel there is no need for an apology.
Posted by: Paul at March 22, 2008 11:13 PM
LtCol Rice,
If you ever think about running for office, you have the vote of this Staff Sergeant.
I'm an American Veteran who just happens to be white. I forged a great bond with the soldiers I have served with of every race and it saddens me to think that even now, in 2008, the Democrats do everything in thier power to keep the civilian population from ever knowing just how well all races can work, live and even love together when "race" is not a force-fed issue.
Kudos to you for sharing your wisdom and to (hopefully) start a movement to put our past in the past, so we can forge a great future together as a Nation of un-hyphenated American brothers and sisters.
Posted by: Paratrooper at March 24, 2008 10:15 PM
Ms. Rice lays the blame squarely where it belongs.
Are you ever going to run for office? I'll vote for you.
Posted by: yonason at March 26, 2008 04:05 AM
partisan politics aside, perhaps the government as a whole should apologize on ALL sides for their continuing involvement in making race such a divisive issue. Regardless of what political flavour you subscribe to there are wrongs and atrocities committed by all who hold office, and wile the democratic party DOES need to own up to its faults, the republican party is not 100% innocent with its CONTINUING use of race to demonize members of American society.
If you want another perspective on another group of people who were disenfranchised by government extermination and segregation policies, you need look no further than what happened to Native Americans.
When it comes to issues of eugenics and racial profiling we've all concluded that it is bad and punishable when Germany or Iraq does it, but when a North American government does chemical castrations on its minority populace, restricts freedoms, racially targets legislation, and causes deaths (don't forget the Japanese "internment"/concentration camps on American and Canadian soil) ... that qualifies as genocide, but no one is punished.
If Germany had not been found guilty of committing horrible crimes against humanity, we would never have looked inward and saw the suffering we had done and continue to this day to hide, the history books written by us conveniently skip over the blood on our hands.
Posted by: RB at March 30, 2008 11:23 PM