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Why We Need Black Republicans

We need black Republicans. By black Republicans I don’t mean black people who will cheerlead for the Republican Party. I mean black people who actually speak for the interests of the black community within the GOP. There’s a big difference.

Anybody who knows me knows that this article has got to be a little self-serving; I’ll cop to that. I’m a candidate for congress in Los Angeles, and yes I am a black Republican. But the point here is a real one: the black community suffers materially, because the political conversation does not focus on our interests. It doesn’t, because black votes are not in play.

As blacks we vote Democrat because we do not trust the Republican Party. Why would we? The  Republican Party has done virtually nothing to earn the trust of black people for the last 45 years, and in fact has threatened the interests of black and poorer peoples, by threatening welfare and unemployment spending during times of recession (even while some of them continue to support government subsidies for oil companies and tax payer funded bailouts for big banks), and by maneuvering to suppress Democratic turnout by trying to pass cynically timed voter I.D. requirements in key states in the 2012 election. Of course, there is a lot that can be said about the ways in which the Democratic Party has actually betrayed the interests of black people as well, but such points do not absolve the guilt of the Republican Party.

I am a fan of neither party as they currently stand, though I understand why most black people would rather be Democrat than Republican. But it doesn’t change the fact that black people are left in a lousy political situation, taken for granted by the party we’re in and ignored by the party we’re not in. Why should Democrats work particularly hard for black votes on a broad scale when they are going to get them anyway? And why should Republicans when they know they are inaccessible? Black people often complain to me about how it is politicians always seem to be talking about Latino issues and Gay issues, fighting for immigration reform and the DREAM Act, gay marriage and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, etc., but seem much slower to move on issues of direct concern to African-Americans (inner-city education reform, the war on drugs, reparations…?). The answer to this lies in the politics. Latino-Americans and Gay Americans are predominantly Democratic, but between a quarter and a third of them routinely vote Republican. As such both parties feel they have a reason to compete for these votes.

The results of this show themselves in real legislation. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed because Democrats and Republicans supported it as a matter of gay rights, and high profile Republicans one by one have been quietly indicating their support for gay marriage or at least greater rights for gay people (including Dick Cheney). And while immigration reform and the DREAM Act have not passed yet, the bipartisan support for these efforts (especially where you have Republicans representing significant Latino populations) is real, with some Republicans like Marco Rubio and John McCain showing a real willingness to fight their fellow Republicans and work with Democrats to get such reforms accomplished.

Any black American who knows the political history of the Civil Rights movement knows that the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were only possible because Republican and Democratic legislators joined together against segregationist Democrats and reactionary Republicans to make it happen. But in the sixties, there was a significant black population in both parties pushing them to accomplish this. In the early 20th century almost all blacks were Republicans, and we did not get that much accomplished politically. In the early 21st century we are almost all Democrats, and we are failing politically (in terms of getting key bills passed or even considered) for the same reason.

As a people we do not need to turn out a bunch of black Republicans overnight, but we do need to establish power within the Republican Party in order to push both parties to serve our interests. Furthermore there are Republicans that the black community can work with to find real common ground. Ron Paul’s campaign opened the flood gates for a wing of the party that is eager to put the brakes on the war on drugs, to renew voting rights for ex-convicts, to eliminate institutional racism in the criminal justice system and perhaps more importantly than anything to dismantle a bureaucratic and self-interested educational system that systematically punishes inner-city children of color and to replace it with a system of equality. But without blacks speaking for the black community within the Republican Party this coalition will not be forged, and in the mainstream legislative conversation we will continue to be ignored.

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Fluent In Ebonics?

From CSMonitor.com:

Federal agents are seeking to hire Ebonics translators to help interpret wiretapped conversations involving targets of undercover drug investigations.

The Drug Enforcement Administration recently sent memos asking companies that provide translation services to help it find nine translators in the Southeast who are fluent in Ebonics, Special Agent Michael Sanders said Monday.

Ebonics, which is also known as African American Vernacular English, has been described by the psychologist who coined the term as the combination of English vocabulary with African language structure.

Some DEA agents already help translate Ebonics, Sanders said. But he said wasn’t sure if the agency has ever hired outside Ebonics experts as contractors.

“They saw a need for this in a couple of their investigations,” he said. “And when you see a need — it may not be needed now — but we want the contractors to provide us with nine people just in case.”

The DEA’s decision, first reported by The Smoking Gun, evokes memories of the debate sparked in 1996 when the Oakland, California, school board suggested that black English was a separate language. Although the board later dropped the suggestion amid criticism, it set off a national discussion over whether Ebonics is a language, a dialect or neither.

The search for translators covers a wide swath of the Southeast, including offices in Atlanta, Washington, New Orleans, Miami and the Caribbean, said Sanders. He said he’s uncertain why other regions aren’t hiring Ebonics translators, but said there are ongoing investigations in the Southeast that need dedicated Ebonics translators.

Linguists said Ebonics can be trickier than it seems, partly because the vocabulary evolves so quickly.

“A lot of times people think you’re just dealing with a few slang words, and that you can finesse your way around it,” said John Rickford, a Stanford University linguistics professor. “And it’s not — it’s a big vocabulary. You’ll have some significant differences” from English.

Critics worry that the DEA’s actions could set a precedent.

“Hiring translators for languages that are of questionable merit to begin with is just going in the wrong direction,” said Aloysius Hogan, the government relations director of English First, a national lobbying group that promotes the use of English.

“I’m not aware of Ebonics training schools or tests. I don’t know how they’d establish that someone speaks Ebonics,” he said. “I support the concept of pursuing drug dealers if they’re using code words, but this is definitely going in the wrong direction.”

H. Samy Alim, a Stanford linguistics professor who specializes in black language and hip-hop culture, said he thought the hiring effort was a joke when he first heard about it, but that it highlights a serious issue.

“It seems ironic that schools that are serving and educating black children have not recognized the legitimacy of this language. Yet the authorities and the police are recognizing that this is a language that they don’t understand,” he said. “It really tells us a lot about where we are socially in terms of recognizing African-American speech.”

Rickford said that hiring Ebonics experts could come in handy for the DEA, but he said it’s hard to determine whether a prospective employee can speak it well enough to translate since there are no standardized tests. He said the ideal candidate would be a native speaker who also has had some linguistics training.

Finding the right translators could be the difference between a successful investigation or a failed one, said Sanders. While he said many listeners can get the gist of what Ebonics speakers are saying, it could take an expert to define it in court.

“You can maybe get a general idea of what they’re saying, but you have to understand that this has to hold up in court,” he said. “You need someone to say, ‘I know what they mean when they say ‘ballin’ or ‘pinching pennies.'”