As the Midterms Approach, Democrats, as Usual, Have Forgotten about Black Men
(A specific hurdle to employment that afflicts black men but not black woman)
As the Midterms Approach, Democrats, as Usual, Have Forgotten about Black Men
(A specific hurdle to employment that afflicts black men but not black woman)
By
David Gottfried
I want the Democrats to win. I don’t find them a particularly attractive lot, but the Republicans are uniformly loathsome and remind me of Benito Mussolini. Like it or not, usually voting is a matter of selecting between the lesser of two evils.
Since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, Democrats have been loudly declaiming --- as they should – that Republicans are destroying a women’s most elemental and vital freedoms and that the Republican assault on privacy rights and sexuality could endanger gay rights, contraception and more.
However, it would be nice if Democrats could, at least once in a while, acknowledge the particular ills that black men suffer. Also, if Democrats really want to win, they ought to pay attention to the black male vote.
Black females vote with a high measure of frequency and regularity. Some years ago, I read that black women in New York, for the most part, were better voters than white Catholic men. I also have read that in some black areas 75 percent of black voters are females. Black men constitute a large pool of potential voters whom Democrats have somehow forgotten about.
Since the liberal focus on sexuality has consisted of the same note (men oppress women) being sounded incessantly for fifty years, the public discourse is devoid of any attention to the problems of black men or men in general.
The feminist note, at first, was uplifting and had a danceable beat when Helen Reddy sang, “I am woman hear me roar,” and had a certain classy, radical redolence when Yoko Ono growled and screamed as if she were having appendicitis and going into childbirth at the same time.
Of course, by the time we heard Geraldine Ferraro’s acceptance speech for the 1984 Vice Presidential nomination, and her constant refrain that we should play by the rules, the feminist song was weighted down with the stodgy, sorrowful notes of a strict schoolmarm who made us write “I will be a good politically correct little boy” 500 times.
(Of course, someone might find my association between political sentiments and music shallow or silly, but stuff like music is the best way to assess the strength and allure of a political program. Most people don’t know a DAMN THING about a party’s or candidate’s policy proposals and vote entirely on the basis of the vibes exuded. Remember 2016 ? Trump said, again and again, that he would get rid of Obama care and give us something wonderful and beautiful that would make us healthier and be much less expensive. He never discussed ANY specific components of his program. (Of course, the “liberal” media never questioned him about his proposals.) Luckily, his vague and empty proposal never went anywhere. Of course, his imbecilic supporters forgot all about his promise to give us Nirvana like health care.)
In any event, I must proffer one of the many ways in which black men suffer problems, in securing employment, that black women never encounter:
A)The Employment Problem that is Specific to Black Men and that Liberal Democrats are Oblivious to.
I have known firms that will hire black women but will not hire black men. It comes down to one specific, simple fear: The fear of crime. White firms are not afraid that black women will steal from them or violently assault them. However, white firms, very often, are afraid that black men will rob them or assault them.
(Incidentally, I used to litigate cases regarding fidelity insurance, a form of insurance which compensates employers if their employees rob them, and the most successful characters were the least suspected characters. They usually worked in a dept. that cut checks. They showed up every day, on time, and their conduct seemed beyond reproach. They wrote checks to imaginary firms that had names that were very similar to the names of legitimate firms that their employers did business with. They were the sole officers of these fictitious firms. In companies that transmitted half a billion dollars to various payees in a year’s time, it was easy to grab 10 million for oneself.)
Of course, the preceding is only one small example of how black men suffer, in employment, in ways that black women don’t suffer.
To get ahead in the hypercapitalistic world that is America, one must be aggressive. Indeed, it is in bad form not be aggressive.
When a black woman is aggressive, she can come off as snappy and suave, sort of like a soul-singer belting out a bluesy number. However, when a black man is aggressive, the white man finds him threatening. In more specific terms, he is deemed a security risk. (Although Little Richard was bisexual or, in his youth, virtually completely gay, he was not effeminate. However, his act was so wonderfully rambunctious and rebellious that he was advised to act more effeminately so he would seem less threatening.)
Essentially, the black man is damned no matter what he does. If he is not aggressive, he is disparaged as a simpering, retreating Uncle Tom good for shining shoes and nothing more. If he is aggressive, white society closes its doors in fear. Incidentally, the conundrum of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t is considered, by some doctors, to be schizophrenogenic, or tending to induce schizophrenia.
Of course, if one surveys the political discourse, it becomes instantly clear that no one is paying attention to any of this. The Republicans don’t care, because they have never cared about black people, or poor white people, whether they are male or female.
The Democrats are so entirely under the spell of feminism that when they speak they seem to care about only those humans who are female. I have heard “liberal” commentators on MSNBC constantly tell us that it is absolutely imperative that black women get better career opportunities, and earn more money, and these commentators never mention that the proportion of black women in college is enormously higher than the proportion of black men in college and that black women are earning much more money than black men. Of course, the preponderance of black woman with more earning power than black men is suppressing the black marriage rate, and increasing the number of households without Fathers, but “liberals” have advised us that Fathers are superfluous and that it’s fine and dandy when children have no father.
As someone who was raised without a Father, and who knows many people who were raised without a Father, I must readily attest that Fatherless guys are among the wackiest Motha Fuckers you’ll ever suffer to know.