YouTube.com and C-Span.org are soliciting video submissions from the public to address this question: “What Issue In This Election Is Most Important To You And Why?” Gary James, Chairman of the Black Political Taskforce submitted video footage and delivered the following narrative.
I think the most important issue in the presidential election of this season is the destination of the Black American vote.
This issue is critical in my view because of the current state of the Black American community at large. Black Americans are the political weakling in comparison to all other minorities in terms of political leverage.
As it is, the Black vote is not currently leveraged. Therefore we can’t hold elected officials and government accountable.
The crisis of the Black vote and our lack of political leverage is a perplexing paradox for many reasons. Not the least of which is the unprecedented advances of Black Americans coming out of slavery to emancipation in the nineteenth century. Couple this liberation with the legislative and statuary achievements of the twentieth century’s modern civil rights movement.
Hence, the political weakling state of Black America at large is indeed paradoxical and perplexing.
Therefore, the destination of the Black vote in presidential election 2008 must be strategic in establishing political leverage - the basis of community empowerment politics.
I suggest that the destination of the Black vote in this year’s general election must not be predicable as usual, in a framework of the foremost monolithic vote.
If our vote follows conventional wisdom and does not establish political leverage in November, we will remain the political weakling. Even if a Black American ascends to the White House.
We must not be enraptured and beguiled by the illusion of the personification of executive political power that is void of a strategic deployment of the Black vote in pursuit of electoral leverage.
The establishment of political leverage is the first commandment for success in the electoral politics of a given interest group, or community. This commandment has apparently eluded us.
Whoever is the ultimate nominee of the Democratic and Republican Parties, the Black vote should split accordingly: thirty percent Republican and seventy percent Democratic, in order to maximize political leverage potential.
As we approach the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, our vote and community must be organized and deployed strategically in the electoral process. Not on the basis of emotion, habitual disposition, family history, or political correctness.
The Black community must be organized and deployed on the basis of respective permanent interests and we must also be positioned to leverage whatever political party is in control at the local or national levels. Personality, ethnicity etc., are absolutely irrelevant to establishing and managing political power relations.
Electoral politics organized and deployed on the basis of friends versus enemies are politically sophomoric and is partly responsible for the current crisis in Black American electoral and community politics.
The Black Political Taskforce has launched an initiative to establish political leverage for the Black community at large. By advocating and promoting a thirty percent verses seventy percent Republican/Democratic split in the vote we will take a decisive step toward establishing political leverage.
What do you think? We hope to inspire a broad based conversation on this issue. Engage us on our BLOG at www.blackpt.org.
Gary James is a freelance writer and an author of two books, the second of which will be released during the winter of this year. He is a longtime political analyst and strategist, and a former staff organizer for the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in New York City during the 1960s. James is the Dean of Deacons and Students of the Balthazar Monastery. The Balthazar Monastery is in communion with the Eastern Oriental Christian tradition. For more information, visit: www.garyjames.info.
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