A few comments before I delve into this question.
First, it would be very hard for any individual Republican candidate to get a high percentage of the African-American vote right now, simply because he or she would be a Republican, and the Republican brand is not a good one with that demographic at the present time.
Therefore, it would require a major refocus of core Republican political goals and platforms in order for the party to have more success with the Black American demographic. Right now, the GOP has pretty much written them off, accepting that nearly all Black voters will vote Democratic, unless they specifically have reasons to support Republican policy goals. A shift in focus that made the Republicans more attractive to Blacks would make them less attractive to the radical alt-right faction, and they have decided that this isn’t worth it from a strictly electoral standpoint.
They could, however, accomplish the goal of your question, very easily once they won the trust of Black voters. It’s worth noting that Black Americans are, in many ways, conservative. The states that are the most diligent about church attendance are ones with a high African-American population, and they have a lot to do with it:
Black churches bucking the trend of decline - Religion News Service
They believe in Christian values, and that’s something that they share with a lot of Republicans, of any race. They also believe in hard work and self-reliance, which Republicans do. But they’ve been told very clearly for many years that there’s no place for them in the GOP, so they have turned to the only other party in the USA that has a chance to be elected. The Republican Party is so determined to hang on to the hardcore racist vote that it has paid lip service to the white nationalists and those who support de facto segregation.
How would I go about solving this, if I were magically handed control of the Republican Party? (Note: I am not a Republican, no matter what one dimwit said in a comment on another answer a few days ago. I’m an independent right-libertarian/civic Nationalist.)
Well, I’d start out by simply listening to what was being said. One big problem with American movement conservatives (who tend to be White and Republican) is that they don’t listen. When some trigger-happy cop shoots a Black person who didn’t need to be shot, or in some cases was completely innocent of any wrongdoing, we hear about the 99.9 percent of cops who aren’t either idiots or racists (true) or that the media sensationalizes the shootings (also true). That doesn’t change the fact that there is a problem. One dumbass cop shooting someone “by accident” and killing them is too many, and it’s a lot more than one, and it’s almost always African-Americans getting shot.
Or we hear one of the favorite Republican “identity politics” arguments, that Black people freeload off the welfare system. The truth is something different:
There were about 44 million people getting food stamps in 2013. Only about 11 million of them were Black. So stop it, already. We need to be talking about ways to get people off food stamps, not complaining about who is getting them. We don’t need the GOP candidate talking to Black people about how the Democrats have screwed up their cities and saying “vote for me, what do you have to lose?” How about another message, something like “We know your schools are all shit and we haven’t done anything to help. You can’t get a decent education for your children, so they can’t get a good job, and they end up on welfare or in jail. The government made idiotic trade deals with foreign powers that sent all of the jobs away, and it hasn’t offered any incentive to create new jobs or help train for new ones.” A good place to start would be to address these issues and then follow through.
That’s just a start. We could continue by talking about the hypocrisy when it comes to drugs, too. I don’t think it matters very much that one group is abusing crack and the other is abusing painkillers and crystal meth, but you wouldn’t know it from the way the government deals with it. You’re much more likely to get off easy from the judicial system if you’re a White person who abuses the latter, than a Black person from the inner city doing the former.
Those are just the first things that come to mind, although there are questions of clean water, other essential services, and health care that certainly are not equal among the African-American community, and people should take a serious look at why that is, and what can be done about it. Because we should. I have little sympathy for the complaints of people who are in this country illegally or who try to come in illegally, but Black Americans are fellow citizens. When we talk about how we should “take care of our own” and not freeloading so-called allies, that’s totally correct—but “our own” just doesn’t mean the Americans who look like you.
As much as I disliked Barack Obama and his policies, when Michelle Obama pointed out that slaves helped build the White House, it resonated with me:
"I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States. So don't let anyone ever tell you that this country isn't great, that somehow we need to make it great again, because this right now is the greatest country on earth."
Except for the part about Hillary Clinton, this was a speech that a Republican should have given, not Michelle Obama. Because it used to be the Republicans who thought this was the greatest country on Earth; Ronald Reagan used to express that sentiment all the time. He also said this:
Somewhere along the line of every Republican since 1988 trying to claim this guy’s legacy, too many of them missed the memo on this. (In fairness, Reagan pandered to some racists himself, but nowhere near like Trump does.) Fuck the white nationalists, let them write in David Duke or Richard Spencer for President. There’s no home for me in a party that doesn’t make it clear that people like that are not welcome. And if I can’t feel at home there, how in the hell are Black Americans going to?
Thanks for Reading
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