I would better respect the Black Republican platform when they can recognize that the Black American Nationalism and “Do for Self”-ism of Garvey, Malcolm X, Maulana Karenga and the RBG (red, black, green) movement is as “American” and “Free-Market” as the nationalism and conservatism espoused by the Republican Party. But of course, the nationalism of some Americans is not the nationalism of most Americans.
The cultural nationalism of African Americans has never been the nationalism of all Americans, and has been treated as “subversive” and, more recently, “self-segregating”. Yet the Black Panther Party, their internal factional violence notwithstanding, was the direct opposite of African-American cultural nationalism. The BPP was intentionally interracial, critical of the foundational normalities of apple-pie America, and was pro-#BlackLivesMatter before it became a hashtag.
To this day, the short-lived BPP has become a recurring meme, a legend for those who wish for interracial solidarity and a change to the racial and economic contract which holds the American status quo on a nigh-unquestionable platform. Books, films, comic books, music, music videos and even the concert staged by Beyonce last night at #SB50 have come to pay some degree of homage to the BPP and their members in the American mass media. Quotes and coinages from members – i.e., Stokely Carmichael’s “institutional racism” – recur to this day in political discussions, but are consigned largely to discussions on the American left and center as the centering of people of color continues apace.
Meanwhile, the cultural nationalism of RBG, of Kwanzaa, of the person who waxes poetic and political for “Mother Africa”, remains marginal in African-American communities.
Perhaps it is sidelined to an expensive, academic pursuit that the average African-American can’t afford. Perhaps it clashes too much with the lived experiences of African-Americans who work, live, play and do business with diverse ranges of people frequently. But Black Republicans in general, I find, can’t even get behind that. They subscribe to the entirety of the myth of America as the land of the Founding Fathers(tm), in which racism of any kind is old history, the free market reigns supreme, ne’er-do-wells should be punished with the full savagery of the state and the vigilante, life begins at the expense of the woman, and the pure image of America must be protected from the adulteration of college professors and other deviants.
This foundational myth, one which is cobbled together across a range of political currents to please a coalition, is one that I find to be static and untenable in the longer run. It’s full of contradictions. The more I see of America, the less I see myself, my experiences or the histories of people of similar background in this myth.
I can’t see myself as a Republican, especially in Georgia. I wish I didn’t have to be a Democrat, especially not in Georgia. I’d be a Working Families Party member, or I’d rename the DPG to something that is relevant. But I vote against this myth.
