Both US parties violated the rights of African Americans: Historian
The two major political parties in the United States have both historically violated the civil rights of African Americans and tolerated abuse against black residents, a researcher and historian in Washington says.
“The two American political parties are like the fox and the wolf, they still ate the chickens and the chicken house,” said Randy Short, a member of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization.
“The Democratic Party had its origin in the mass killing of black people at the end of the Civil War and beyond; the party of lynching and racism, and their partner in this was the Republican Party,” Dr. Short said in an interview with Press TV on Friday.
“There’s a consensus among the white ruling elite and the masses of whites that blacks are inferior, blacks are subordinate, blacks shouldn’t have human rights, so it doesn’t matter about the two parties,” he added.
The GOP’s base has generally consisted of groups such as white, married Christian Protestants, rural and suburban citizens, and non-union workers without college degrees, while urban residents, ethnic minorities, the unmarried, and union workers having shifted to the Democratic Party.
Dr. Short dismissed a speech by Republican US presidential candidate Rick Perry where he urged his party to do more to court black voters in the 2016 US presidential elections.
Perry, the former Texas governor and 2016 presidential hopeful, used a half-hour speech at the National Press Club in Washington to try and recast blacks' concerns as going beyond race, and to woo skeptical black voters.
“For too long, we Republicans have been content to lose the black vote because we found we didn’t need it to win,” he said.
“When we gave up on trying to win the support of African-Americans, we lost our moral legitimacy as the party of [Abraham] Lincoln, as the party of equal opportunity for all,” he stated.
The comments by Perry, who was also a White House contender in 2012, coincided with renewed public debate about race and widespread discrimination against African Americans.
“Governor Rick Perry is a cynical, pathological liar and fraud and is such a poor student of American history,” Mr. Short said.
The United States has suffered from an epidemic of racial violence throughout its history, which some experts say has increased after the election of President Barack Obama.
AHT/GJH
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