PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
Blacks, conservative movement have a long, rich history together :: 02/02/2015
Many folks ask how I can support the conservative movement as an African-American. Most of the time I ignore the question, the black community isn’t monolithic politically, each person regardless of race should be allowed to choose which party and ideology to follow. However, recently I’ve really started to contemplate some of my political positions and consider once again why I believe the things I believe, especially in light of issues that are important to me as an attorney and a young African-American, such as criminal justice reform and the like, which made me look at the conservative movement and the black community.
For instance, consider conservatives and criminal justice reform. For conservatives the fight for reforming the criminal justice reform should be a no-brainer, it’s a fight to limit the scope and authority of government at all levels. Those on the right should be the first ones agitating against the imprisonment of millions of fellow citizens for non-violent offenses. And for the record many are, the much maligned Koch brothers have spent millions over the years fighting for reform, as have figures such as Rand Paul and his father, former Congressman Ron Paul. To conservatives like them it makes no sense to argue for small government but a large out of control judicial system that ensnares far too many of our black and brown citizens.
And then there are cases of police brutality such as the Eric Garner case out of New York from last summer.
Where was the T.E.A. Party movement?
“Taxed Enough Already”, it’s the very name of the movement, the very basis of the movement is tax evasion and avoidance, the very crime Eric Garner was being harassed for. And yet far too many conservatives and self proclaimed tea party supporters jumped to defend the police and law enforcement officials. In fact, the original tea party, in Boston, the one where revolutionaries dressed as Native Americans and snuck on a boat to dump British tea, centered around product smuggling and avoiding taxes. So if any group of folks should have been up in arms about what happened to Eric Garner and the countless other men and women of color in major cities, it should have been tea partiers.
But alas….
The same goes for those who advocate gun rights.
The National Rifle Association, which bills itself as the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights’ organization, swept through the south in its early incarnation, registering black members, teaching them the ins and outs of gun use and safety, pointing to firearms as a means of protecting their newly won rights after the Civil War. In fact many blacks were not shy about hailing the organization for its support during the darkest days of the Jim Crow era.
And it was gun rights advocates and second amendment enthusiasts who stood shoulder to shoulder, at least the most honest and pure ones, with Black Panther groups and other black militant organizations throughout the 1960s against more establishment leaders and stalwarts such as Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson as they led the charge to pass gun registration laws on the state and national levels. Reagan’s support for gun registration in California during his tenure as Governor was in direct response to Huey P. Newton’s protest on the steps of the California state capitol, a move similar to many such protests by conservative white gun owners of today.
But far too often modern gun advocates are MIA when it comes to the black community.
So the record shows the conservative movement is inexorably intertwined with the history of blacks in this country. Conservatives, classical liberals, fighting for the individual rights and economic freedom, regardless of race was once the norm. By all accounts, black civil rights activists should be marching arm and arm with those in the conservative movement. Perhaps one day they will be…once again.
