In this undated photo, flags, including a Confederate flag, hang at the government center in Hillsborough County, Fla. Commissioners voted to remove the Confederate flag and it will be taken down at noon on Thursday, July 16, 2015, and placed at the Tampa Bay History Center. (Skip O’Rourke/The Tampa Bay Times via AP)
From re-districting (where in Florida the state Supreme Court recently struck down as unconstitutional a re-districted map drawn primarily by Republicans) to voter ID bills in places like North Carolina that seemed designed to suppress Black votes, it seems like every time a “Conservative” cause takes hold, Black folks are the target.
It is simply breathtaking that it took until 2015 following the massacre of 9 Black people attending a prayer meeting in a South
Carolina church for government officials in places like Maryland, South Carolina and many other states to realize that flying the Confederate Battle Flag and naming public parks after Confederate Generals are deeply offensive to Blacks. Why did it take so long? Conservative Republican opponents in Congress continue to justify their fight for the Confederate Flag by stating that they are preserving “Southern Heritage,” whatever that might be.
But the list goes on, and on, and on: questioning Obama’s birth certificate, shouting down President Obama during his 2009 health care speech to Congress, inviting Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress over the objection of the White House, in addition to the never ending tactics (political, etc.) in opposition to Obamacare.
Yes, politics is a contact sport and reasonable people can disagree vehemently. And we realize that change is hard. However, the constant Conservative Republican opposition to so many issues important to Black people, makes it clear to us that there is indeed something else going on here. Racism!