LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Democrats like Rangel are real ‘Uncle Tom’

OPINION:

If only I could print the words I feel over New York Rep. Charles B. Rangel’s ridiculous and babbling accusations that Republicans are racists who think slavery never ended (“Charlie Rangel on GOP: They ’believe slavery isn’t over’” Web, Oct. 31).

Let’s set the record straight: The pre-Civil Rights South was a Democratic stronghold. Democrats seceded from the Union, fired on Fort Sumter, launched the Civil War, fought tooth-and-nail for slavery, created the Ku Klux Klan, imposed Jim Crow race laws, denied free blacks Second Amendment and other rights, invented “miscegenation” and outlawed mixed marriages. In both the North and the South, Democrats opposed the civil rights movement and crushed President Eisenhower’s efforts to advance civil rights laws.

Then, having failed in the Civil War and in the Jim Crow era to use government to oppress blacks — which only made many black Americans want to vote Republican — Democrats discovered they could use government to reimpose a hidden slavery through phony wars on poverty and discrimination. They thereby cleverly turned blacks into loyal devotees of the Democrats, followers who would vote the ticket like lemmings. Let a black American stand up for Republican principles, and the Democrats label him an “Uncle Tom” and crush him.

Republicans, on the other hand, opposed slavery from the party’s very start, put down Democrats when they launched the Civil War, passed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution exclusively to give black Americans equal standing. They attempted to reconstruct the recalcitrant racist “Dixiecrat” South after the Civil War. They passed multiple civil rights laws between 1866 and 1960, supported Brown v. Board of Education, attempted to pass additional civil rights laws under Eisenhower (laws the Democrats later cynically co-opted under President Johnson). Republicans started Howard University and Spelman College, enforced school desegregation and more. All of these moves were opposed by Democrats.

Today a large number of black Americans are as socially, economically and politically impoverished as ever — by Democratic policies that have ruined our families, society, economy and political system, turned America into a dysfunctional, broke, impoverished laughingstock worldwide and derailed all attempts by good-hearted people to bring harmony to race relations.

Democrats such as Mr. Rangel spin their never-ending story of victimization and discrimination, often while sitting in the highest seats of power and even after a majority of whites twice elected a black president and routinely entrust black politicians with the highest positions of political, legal, military and economic power.

Is there a single place in America “off-limits” to black Americans? No. Is there a federal law requiring whites to vote for black candidates or put black leaders in charge? No. Those in charge are in charge because Americans of all colors considered them the best candidates for the jobs. How did we get to this point after centuries of oppression against blacks? Thank a Republican. The Democrats are the real “Uncle Tom.”

CHRISTOPHER McKEON

Spotsylvania, Va.