Blog : Being an Authentic Black

6573 posts
9/22/2008 2:59 pm

Being an Authentic Black

Written by QW from Atlanta

I ran across a blog tonight that I found irresistable and had to comment on. Another one of my brothers (black man) brought up the argument that the main reason that Hillary (a woman) or Barack (a black man) may not win is because of racism and sexism mostly because of well u know, evil white people.

I'm summing it up. It was irritating to me to see sooo many people say that they would vote for them because of their race or gender not because they know anything about him. Now I know that racism exists and I am not naive. I know that sexism exists, I am not naive. I am, of course a black woman, but come on, give it a damn rest. There is racism in ALL communities and I have seen more of it in my life from my own race, blatantly so, than other races. I could not stand the hypocrisy.

Here was my response to the blog:

****I am black and I am not going to vote for Barack because I disagree with his political ideology. I feel the same way about Hillary. I dont like her as a person and I have caught her in too many lies. I also disagree with her ideology as well. I do have concern about his true background as well, lots of people do but many are afraid to voice it in public, Im not. I am also tired of the race and sex card being played all the time.

Could it possibly be that maybe people wont vote for him or her (from all races) because they think he is inexperienced and she is divisive and is too liberal? Could it possibly be because many Americans dont believe in open borders, abortion, socialized medicine, weak foreign policy, or maybe are for traditional marriage? I find it funny that when a black conservative is elected or appointed to office or runs for a position in government (like a Michael Steele, Condi Rice, or Clarence Thomas) the race factor is NEVER an issue brought up and they are constantly attacked, called sell-outs, uncle-Toms, and even called racist names by "tolerant" liberals.

A persons skin color or sex does not suddenly change just because they subscribe to a different idiology or are true to their moral foundation.

Because I left the democrat party in 2002, I have been called all kinds of racist names by democrats. How is that ok? I will not be voting for Clinton esp because I served in the US Army in intelligence for NSA during their administration and saw what they did to the military, how our benefits and medical care were reduced, and working in intel saw things that frankly were neglectful. So can we please drop the race and gender issue and talk about ideas?! ****

For those of you who do not know me personally and want to write me off as a neocon, heartless, or priviledged black sell-out let me share something with you. I was born to a single mother who was 17 who, thank God, didnt abort me.She got married when I was 2 yrs old and I have 4 brothers and sisters. I never have been sure about my real father and I love my mother and the dad that raised me very much.

Due to my dad's job, we moved to Ohio, in the middle of nowhere. My father was a salesman and mother worked intermittently so it was always feast or famine. I also ended up being a product of a divorced family but thank God my parents waited until we were out of the house for the most part.

I was one of only 10 black in the school and what made it worse is that I was the only one who was not related to the other 9, who just happened to live on the other side of town. I admit I was picked on by white , some called me n***** but not many. I admit that sometimes I felt left out or that I was not as pretty as the other girls because I was different but my parents and wonderful grandmother taught me to overcome and never play the race card because it doesnt do any good. It doesnt move you forward in life towards success. My parents taught me as well as my church that the best way to combat adversity is to excel and be better, to do you best.

Now on the other hand, the other 9 black in the school tortured me all throughout high school until it culminated in an assault. I was picked on cause I "talked white," because I had "good hair" (and it was all mine), because I had "light eyes and was high yella," etc. I was called a nerd, stuck up, uncle Tom mammy by my own race.

I didnt hang with them much not because they were black but because several of the girls had babies in jr high and when I did try to be their friend, I was treated like crap. One evening at a football game, I was called the most vile names by my own race and did what my parents told me, to walk away. Well I had walked away for 4 yrs and this time, the girl grabbed my hair and ripped the back of my shirt. It was a gang of my own race, over 20, trying to beat me down and finally I faught back.

That experience did not sour me against all of my own race because I knew that it was just a few bad individuals and I loved my people. The way I was treated, I always felt that I was not black enough for the black people and not white enough for the white people, so I decided to define my own identity.

My senior year of high school, I moved to Youngstown, Oh with my grandmother to go to "private school." We lived in the inner city for the 1st time since I was very young. We were not rich. We were on such a low budget that we lived at the YWCA that year while my grandmother worked nights as a nurse. It was about this time that my younger sister got pregnant. I went to an all black school for the 1st time and was so excited to get to be somewhere that I thought I would fit in and be comfortable. Well, that year was hell.

I got the SAME exact treatment. I was too smart, too white, too proper, too thin, too snotty, were those my real eyes, was that my real hair, the list goes on and on. This was supposed to be a Christian school but many of the students didnt behave that way. I remember we had school pictures one day and I had just gotten my hair done for the 1st time in a long while. I walked into the school and several girls poured egg yolks and threw water out the window onto me. They absolutely hated me. But again I graduated and got a full scholarship to Kent State University to study "African Studies."

I was so excited to learn more about my African roots (although I had Irish, Blackfoot Indian, and Chinese in my background as well). I went to the university 1 week after graduating high school. I felt so fortunate and blessed. After 1 semester of "African Studies" I started to become an angry black woman. I started to fault whites for everything and almost became a black seperatist. I started to embrace multiculturalism, alternative Afro-centric religions, and I was hateful and angry. I went home and my family didnt even recognize me and my newfound liberation. My parents had always been very vocal democrat supporters but even they felt I had taken it to another level. I am very proud of ALL of my heritage, my race, my uniqueness, who I am, but there is a difference between pride and hate. I hadnt realized how much and how quickly I had changed for the worse.

So I decided to leave the program and go back home, to the YWCA, work 2 jobs, and pay for my own college. We shared one community bathroom, had no private telephones, and lived with over 25 crack addicted mothers and their babies. It was hard. I was doing well in college and thats when I talked to my uncle, who proudly served in the ARMY for 20 years, and I decided to take a look at it.

Desert Storm was raging, I was still only 17, and the military was the last thing I thought I would ever do. I went to the recruiter, took the tests, passed the physicals, signed up, and THEN told my parents. It was a decision that changed my life.

In the military I was an overachiever and jumped in head first. I met so many different kinds of people. I started to get over my bitterness and met lots of white people who had never met a black person, due to where they grew up. I met black people who were like me, who grew up poor, wealthy, in other countries. I worked with people from different nations while working for the National Security Agency.

I paid for my OWN college and got my bachelors before I left my 1st duty station. While I went to school, other soldiers I was friends with partied. When I graduated and was getting my 2nd bachelors, they were STILL hangin out. When I drove around in a junkie car, didnt have much of a social life, and worked constantly, they made fun of me because I didnt have more bling. When I got out of the military and was able to get a corporate job, these same friends of mine played the race card.

They accused me of unfair advantage, of being a kissup, and told me that I had it easy. What a short term memory they had? I was also a very outspoken democrat even though I had conservative church values, patriotism, and what I called "common sense." I even cried in 2000 when Bush got elected.

September 11th, 2001 changed our nation and changed my life. I started to listen to what people were saying, how they blamed our country, how they sympathized with the enemy. I started questioning my own value system to see if it lined up with how and who I voted for. As a new wife and mother, I became more concerned about the future world they would inherit morally, fiscally, economically and safety wise.

When our was diagnosed with Autism, I started to reflect about how to be thankful for what u had while listening to people with healthy complain. When I got seriously ill and had to find a way to purchase my own health insurance after losing my job, I started to reflect on taking more responsibility for my own medical care. When I saw the effect personally that Enron had on my family, I started to reflect on corporate greed.

When we had to sacrifice financially to put our in a private Christian school so she could get the best education, I started to reflect on why more people did not make their 's education a priority. When we had to fight the public school district for our to get the BASIC education he needed and had to keep him home in order to keep him safe, I reflected on the horrible condition and bureacracy of the public education system. When we started our own business and were scammed and lost everything after yrs of hard work, I started to reflect on what to do next. At every turn, I had to reflect...will I be a victim or an overcomer?

As I volunteered with lower-income families and single mothers in my community, I started to ask HONEST questions about the state of black America and why we believed in victimization and lost so much of our sense of personal responsibility and accountability that we had in previous generations. Why was there was so much crime, poverty, irresponsibility, unwed pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, dependence on government, high drop out rates, apathy, discouragement, self-hatred, etc in our communities?

I stopped looking just at race or poverty and wanted to look deeper into real solutions. I started to examine the liberal policies and politicians who had been running our communities and convincing us that we could not make it without them. I started to try to look past my prejudices and misconceptions about conservatives and actually objectively examine their policies and ideas.

Those experiences and challenges are what let me to realize that I was a conservative and that as afraid as I was of being called a sell-out, disloyal, Uncle Tom, etc. I had to vote my conscience and stand up for what I believed in.

I have made mistakes in my life just like anyone else and have had excuses to be a victim but have not. Where we are today, what we have accomplished is due to God's grace, His blessings, hard work, and the refusal to fall down and NOT get back up. We are an American success story DESPITE our race, age, background or gender not because we are great but because this country is great.

I believe that anyone who puts their mind to it, can succeed in the land of opportunity. People can overcome, if they choose to overcome. That is why I am a patriot. That is why I love this country so much.

This is my personal experience. If you want to comment and try to attack me personally for something I have written, dont bother. I am just sick and tired of the racism, sexism card being played all the time.

So before you write me off as being naive about racism or sexism, forgetting where I came from, or calling me a fascist neo-con without compassion, think twice.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Great Factual Reply to QW's blog:

Hello there smart woman .. (Q)

And thank you for opening up your inner self as you have. I have long been perplexed at how, to this day, Blacks continue to follow the liberal mindset. It wasn't always that way.

I was raised in the 50s, when there was a virtual dividing line for Black people. Until ... a Black family moved in our neighborhood. My Mother was a living saint, and she brought all of us up (5) in the teachings of God. One day, I came home from school and there was my Mom, and this new Black neighbor having coffee together. In my Mother's infinate wisdom and love for her fellow man, she recognized that woman, and her families decision to take a huge leap into an all white neighborhood, as an opportunity to welcome, and befriend her. They would have many coffee chats thereafter. That was in the late 1950s ...

I am not one to befriend or visit liberal blogs here on Myspace, for I learned long ago, even when you present factual information, it is rejected and ridiculed. Like the ole saying goes ... I love hitting my head against a brick wall, because it feels so good when I stop. However ...
I recently had the opportunity to pose this question to a Lib ... "Which political party, historicly, has played the greatest roll in defending Civil Rights in this country?" Her answer, of course, was the DEMs. Now, she appeared to be a very bright woman. Well read with a wonderful command of the English language. But she was so wrong, and I was going to prove it to her ...

We began an ongoing, email conversation that lasted a few days. I began to feel that I had a Lib within my intellectual grips, who's mind, when presented with facts, could and would be changed. The more facts I presented her with, the more here responses were wow, I didn't know that. Our conversation ended with what I presented to her below, which I hope you don't mind I share with you here, but it's long and will use up a lot of your space here. Her final response was, "Wow, that was actually enjoyable." That was a few weeks ago, and from time to time, I have visited her Blog to see if she might have passed that information on to her very loyal, liberal readers. She has not. Today, the liberal mindset is cemented within the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Martin Luther King would be appalled. And now, here is the information I sent her. Thank you for allowing me this time and space ...

Honoring 150 Years of Republican Civil Rights Achievements

This year marks an important anniversary -- and it’s a big one. Our party is a century and a half old this year. That is a big, big event: after all -- a 150th anniversary doesn’t come along but once … every 150 years.

It was 150 years ago this year that our party was founded in a small midwest town. Take a moment to think what was going on 150 years ago: John Phillip Sousa was born. Sacramento became the capital of our state. The San Francisco Gas Company illuminated its first gaslights. That’s the world in which a few people in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin came together to map strategy and to form the Republican Party.

The history of our party is as remarkable as it is untold, and it is under-appreciated for that reason. Just in the area of civil rights, there is no way in these brief comments that I can do anything like a comprehensive presentation. But I can tell you that for the last two years, the Republican Policy Committee in the United States Congress has been working to chronicle the Republican civil rights history, gathering thousands of facts, dates, and events. And today we are proudly issuing the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar.

Unfortunately, the Republican Freedom Calendar has only 365 days. And so we have had to pick 365 out of hundreds and hundreds of additional civil rights accomplishments. It is truly impressive to go through this. I have learned an extraordinary amount about our party as a result of this project.

The Republican Party, I am absolutely confident in saying, is the most effective political organization in the history of the world in advancing the cause of freedom. Frankly, we haven’t had any competition.

The mission of our party was clearly stated by Abraham Lincoln: “to lift the artificial weights from all shoulders, and clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all.” His use of the word “pursuit” recalls Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence. Just as America’s founding document declared our right to pursue happiness, the Republican philosophy has always been focused on opportunity -- not equality of outcome, but equality of opportunity. The “artificial weight” that Lincoln is talking about is, of course, the weight of the state. In the
most egregious form of statism, the government imposed slavery on millions of Americans.

Today, the animating spirit of the Republican Party is exactly the same as it was at its founding: free minds, free markets, free expression, and unlimited opportunity. Leading the organized opposition to these ideas 150 years ago, just as today, was the Democratic Party -- in the form, then as now, of politically correct speech; a preference for government control over individual decision making (and of course slavery was the most extreme form of government control); government control of enterprise; and an insistence on seeing people as members of groups, rather than as individuals. It was that refusal to see the unique value of every individual that
was at the heart of the Democrats’ support of slavery.

So on this 150th anniversary, it is useful to look back. This morning, I will speak briefly on four of the significant accomplishments of the Republican Party in the area of individual rights and freedoms:

First, the role of our party in bringing an end to slavery in the United States.

Second, the role of our party in extending the right to vote to men and women of all backgrounds, of all races, and of all creeds.

Third, the leadership role of our party in ushering in the modern civil rights era.

And fourth, the leading role of our party in establishing an American policy of peace through strength that has freed hundreds of millions of people around the world from slavery and brought freedom, democracy, women’s rights, and minority rights to the former Soviet Empire and across central and eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

From President Lincoln’s victory in the Civil War, to President Reagan’s victory in the Cold War, to President Bush’s liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the policies of the Republican Party have brought freedom to a major portion of the planet’s population that previously lived in slavery.

These astounding achievements are the result of our party’s establishment with a fundamentally different vision than the Democrats whom we formed to oppose 150 years ago.

We started our party with the express intent to protect the American people from the Democrats’ pro-slavery policies that made people inferior to the state. The Democrats didn’t just oppose Republicans, or merely tolerate racial discrimination; they were aggressively pro-slavery -- so much so that they were alternately referred
to as the “Slaveocrats.”

So on March 20, 1854, our founders decided to take them on. They drafted plans and platforms, and in the space of a few months, put together Republican Party organizations across the Northern and Western portions of the United States.

The first Republican state convention was held in Jackson, Michigan just a few months later in July. The first meeting of the Republican National Committee was two years later. Three months after that, the first Republican National Convention was held in Philadelphia.

That first Republican National Convention nominated our first presidential candidate, who -- as everyone here knows -- was a former U.S. Senator from California, John C. Fremont. He didn’t win, but just four years later, a former member of the House did win, carrying the Republican standard. And not only did Lincoln win the presidency, but his coattails were so long and so broad that Republicans won majorities -- big majorities -- in both the House and in the Senate.

In fact, after the election of 1860, every single governor in every northern state in the United States was a Republican. This was phenomenal progress in the space of just a few years. It was possible because our party was based on such a powerful idea. We know now that we don’t win elections unless we have ideas behind us. The history of the Republican Party is an amazing example of how much can be accomplished if your ideas are big enough.

These Republican majorities, and the strength of our ideas, enabled us to fight and win the Civil War. This same Republican commitment to individual freedom led our nation through Reconstruction, and guided our policies to the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, to make the United States of America what it is today: a beacon of hope and freedom for the entire world.

Military histories of the Civil War are commonplace. There is an enormous industry dedicated to producing DVDs, videos, movies, and books about the military aspects of the Civil War. But all too little attention is paid to the political aspects of the Civil War. For many years after the Civil War, the history books accurately described the Republican Party’s leading role in preserving the Union and ending slavery. But as history faded, and college professors became more partisan and politically tendentious, the facts were lost. “History” changed. The facts didn’t change, but our history books did.

Today, students are taught that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was an eccentric individual act, and that Lincoln rose above politics in issuing it. In fact, the opposite was true. This was a profoundly political act, which had been expressly authorized by the U.S. Congress in a hotly debated law. Both the House and the Senate had solidly Republican majorities, which -- over strong Democratic opposition ‒ had passed the Confiscation Act.

That law stated very clearly that slaves belonging to rebels were free. By signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln was implementing that statute. Freeing the slaves was thus a political question that every Republican in Congress voted for, and every Democrat voted against.

At the end of the war, despite their strong majorities, Republicans in Congress knew they wouldn’t have a majority forever. Anticipating that the Democrats might someday come back into power, Republicans unanimously voted for what became the 13th Amendment to the Constitution -- thereby putting an end to slavery.

The Republicans in Congress went on to pass the nation’s first ever Civil Rights Act, extending citizenship and equal rights to people of all races, all colors, and all creeds. Notice that Republicans didn’t take the political approach that they might have, limiting themselves to saying that former slaves would now be treated equally, or only blacks or African-Americans would gain their civil rights. We said all people, all colors, all creeds -- because that’s the way Republicans think. The founders of the Republican Party were simply putting in force the stated ideals of the Founding Fathers, so that our government would finally recognize that all people are created equal, and that all should enjoy the right to pursue happiness.

Republicans have always believed that every man and woman is created equal. This is not a choice that can be made for us by others. It isn’t up to our government. So we required our government to fulfill that promise.

The same year as the first Civil Rights Act, Republicans in Congress wrote another constitutional amendment to extend even further the scope of our civil rights legislation. We extended the concepts of due process of law, and equal protection of the laws, to every state. Now, every state -- even those where Democrats held sway -- would have to implement these principles. No longer just at the federal level, but at the state level as well, the civil rights of every American individual would be protected.

This major civil rights advance -- what we now know as the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- is a purely Republican achievement, because every single Democrat in Congress voted against the 14th Amendment. That is another fact deftly omitted from American history textbooks these days: we owe our Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws and due process to Republicans, and this bedrock of American civil rights was unanimously opposed by the Democrats.

Three years later, in 1869, the Republicans proposed yet another constitutional amendment, this one specifically guaranteeing blacks the right to vote. The same partisanship was in evidence: 98% of Republicans voted for it; 97% of the Democrats voted against it.

Seven years later, Republicans in Congress authored what was then, and what remains today, the most sweeping Civil Rights legislation ever enacted. The 1875 Civil Rights Act guaranteed the right of equal access to all citizens in all public accommodations -- whether or not owned or controlled by the government. Now that phrase, “public accommodations,” is very familiar to us today, because it was at the heart of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which became the focal point of the 1960s civil rights movement. The reason that this question was before the Congress again in the 1960s is that the 1875 Civil Rights Act only lasted for eight years before the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. What finally became law in 1964, therefore, was the original Republican legislation of 90 years earlier. Not surprisingly, in 1964 a significantly higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The Democrats’ opposition to Republican efforts to protect the civil rights of African-Americans lasted not just through the Reconstruction era, but well into the 20th Century. In the South, the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party, the Ku Klux Klan, virtually destroyed the Republican Party -- which did not recover enough to become a force in the region until President Reagan’s message of freedom and equality for all prevailed in the 1980s.

Every single African-American in Congress, House and Senate, until 1935 was a Republican.

In 1872, the first black governor took office in Louisiana. I love his name: Pinckney Pinchback, a great Republican. Our own state of California was the first to have a Hispanic governor. Can you guess his political party? Republican Romualdo Pacheco became governor in 1875, long before anybody had ever heard of Cruz Bustamante.

The first Hispanic U.S. Senator was elected from New Mexico in 1928. You guessed it -- he was a Republican, Octaviano Larrazolo.

Republicans led the fight for women’s voting rights -- and the Democrats, as a party, opposed civil rights for women. All of the leading suffragists -- including Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- were Republicans. In fact, Susan B. Anthony bragged, after leaving the voting booth, that she had voted for “the Republican ticket -- straight.”

The suffragists included two African-American Republican women who were also co-founders of the NAACP: Ida Wells and Mary Terrell, great leaders of our party, both of them.

The first women delegates to a national party convention did not go to the Democratic National Convention, they went to the Republican Convention. In fact, for years Democrats kept women out, while Republicans were letting women in. The goal of the Republican suffragists, including their male Republican elected official friends, was to add an amendment to the Constitution that would give women the right to vote. Sadly, there is not a single California schoolbook in use today that tells students it was a Republican U.S. Senator from California, Aaron Sargent, who authored the women’s suffrage amendment -- or that he named it in honor of another great Republican, Susan B. Anthony.

Senator Sargent introduced the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in 1878, but it didn’t become the law of the land until 1920. Why? Because Republicans did not have majorities in both the House and the Senate at the same time, and the Democrats kept voting against it. But, in the meanwhile, in 1916, Montana -- which had by state law given women the right to vote -- elected Jeannette Rankin to be the first woman to serve in the United States Congress. She, of course, was a Republican.

In the national election two years later, in 1918, Republicans won majorities in both the House and the Senate. We then swiftly passed the Women’s Suffrage Amendment. And 1920, therefore, was the first presidential election in which all women could vote. What do you think most women in America did? They voted for Warren Harding. In fact, I remember having a conversation with my grandmother about this. I talked to her about the first time she was able to vote, and I asked her, “Who did you vote for?” She looked at me as if I were crazy. “Of course,” she answered, “I voted for the Republicans. They gave us the vote.” That’s why the Republican
landslide for Harding was so big that year.

Meanwhile, in the face of the Democrats’ continued terrorizing of Republican organizational activity in the South, many courageous Republicans were standing up nonetheless. One of the great Southern leaders of that era who was openly calling himself a Republican and drawing attention to his cause was Booker T. Washington, the famed educator and founder of Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute. But even a man as distinguished as this, and even in the 20th century, was opposed by a still-racist Democratic Party. When Republican President Teddy Roosevelt had the temerity to invite Booker T. Washington to dine with him in the White House, the Democrats raised holy hell through the media. They said it was a scandal, and outrageous, and an atrocity.

Republicans led the integration of pro sports. Branch Rickey, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was a Republican businessman who hired his fellow Republican, Jackie Robinson. Together they integrated Major League Baseball when Jackie Robinson took the field in 1947 for his first game. In addition to being a great athlete, a great Dodger, and a great American, Jackie Robinson was a great Republican -- and a very outspoken one.

This year, 2004, is the 50th anniversary of the modern civil rights movement, which most people date to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. That opinion was written by a Republican Chief Justice appointed by a Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower. And of course that Republican Chief Justice had been our three-term Republican Governor here in California, and he’d been our Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States in 1948: Earl Warren.

Three years after Brown, President Eisenhower won passage of his landmark Civil Rights Act of 1957. Now remember, the nation had just ended a long stretch of Democratic administrations -- nearly four terms of FDR, and seven years of Truman -- and yet there had been no civil rights legislation at all. In fact, the Republican Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first U.S. civil rights legislation in eight decades.

Another great Republican, U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, authored and introduced the 1960 Civil Rights Act. It was also he who was most responsible -- more than any other individual -- for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As Republican Leader in the Senate, even though his party was in the minority, Dirksen crafted the strategy that overcame long odds and tenacious Democratic opposition.

The Democrats weren’t just internally conflicted about the 1964 Civil Rights Act; a significant number of them actually filibustered it -- preventing an up or down vote on the bill. Eventually, however -- thanks to Dirksen’s leadership -- this landmark legislation did get the vote it deserved. As with all of the previous civil rights legislation in our nation’s history, it passed with significantly more support from Republicans than from Democrats. The same was true for the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which became law the following year.

Which political party gave our nation the first Asian American Senator in the United States Senate? The Republican Party -- and it was the esteemed Hiram Fong of Hawaii. The first African American Senator after Reconstruction? Republican Ed Brooke from Massachusetts. The first Asian American federal judge? Republican Herbert Choy, appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, by President Nixon, for whom I served as law clerk.

The first woman on the Supreme Court? Everyone knows that. But you may not have known that before she became a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Arizona Republican Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman to be Majority Leader in the legislature of any state.

The first Hispanic member of the President’s Cabinet? Republican Lauro Cavazos, Secretary of Education under President Reagan.

It was President Ford who, in 1976, repealed FDR’s notorious executive order interning 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

We can be proud of Republican appointments such as Justice Clarence Thomas, the former Chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Colin Powell, the first African American to be National Security Advisor or Secretary of State; Condoleezza Rice, the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor; and Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, the first Asian American woman in any president’s
Cabinet.

This remarkable, unbroken 150-year string of civil rights achievements is the reason that, this year, we are so proud to publish the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar. Our party has a great story to tell. There is also much work still to be done to secure the God-given rights of all men and women, and the Republican Party is
leading the way.

Ronald Reagan was fond of saying that the United States of America is the only country on Earth, now or at any time in history, that was founded not on race or nationality, but on an ideal. Republicans, from the founding of our party to this very day, have been carrying forward this ideal of individual freedom.

Now, in our 150th year as a party, we have not only an opportunity to reflect, but also a chance to advance our cause of promoting freedom. This is a presidential election year, and the choice could not be more stark.

Today, our nation is carrying the torch of freedom to oppressed people across the globe. President Bush and the Republican Party have led America to throw off the “chains of oppression” in Afghanistan, and to free millions of women from the shackles of Taliban rule. Afghan women can now vote; they can go to school; they can practice their professions; and women are no longer required to be fully covered from head to toe when in public. In response to this American victory for human rights, Michael Moore, John Kerry, and John Edwards have only criticism.

President Bush and the Republican Party have led America to liberate Iraq, freeing more than 24 million people from a brutal, murderous dictator who piled more than 400,000 men, women, and in mass graves -- and who killed more than one million of his fellow citizens. Iraqi men and women are now building their own democracy, as a free people. But John Kerry, Michael Moore, and John Edwards say that spreading democracy in the Middle East is a fool’s errand unworthy of America.

Republicans disagree, as we have for 150 years. We believe that governments have no right to enslave people, and that our own liberties are at risk when racists, theocrats, terrorists, and murderers go unpunished and unchecked. That is why, in the end, our Republican commitment to civil rights and individual freedom undergirds our policies of limited government and peace through strength.

This year, the cause for freedom can advance or retreat. With your help, it will prevail. Pick up a 2005 Freedom Calendar. Share it with a friend. Remember: if you don’t spread the message of our party, the media, academia, and Hollywood won’t do it for you.

Congratulations on being a Republican. And happy 150th Birthday!

Speech by Rep. Christopher Cox

Posted by IRRD is Magnify My LORD!

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