To The Democratic Party: Do Not Take African Americans for Granted

Senator Elizabeth Warren speaking at the Netroots Nation conference Saturday said "we are the heart and soul of today's Democratic Party". She was referring to the so-called liberal wing of the party. Wrong Senator Warren. African Americans are the heart and soul of the Democratic Party and perhaps more importantly we are its core constituency. We are also, its most loyal constituency. In spite of demonstrated blind loyalty to the party we are still taken for granted. Issues that are important to us are never given priority and when they are considered at all it is only as an afterthought. We have, in effect, given the democratic party a free ride for more than eighty years. They have never had to work for our support. We should now recognize that we cannot continue to follow the same course of action and expect different results. It is insanity for us to fail to aggressively advocate our interests for the so-called good of a political party that has never truly supported our issues and that sat by and watched our subjugation when they were not actively implementing and enforcing it. To paraphrase Einstein, to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is insanity. Now is the time for change.

Senator Warren proclaimed that "the Democratic Party isn't "going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill". She is of course referring to The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, and The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act both signed into law by Democrat Bill Clinton. These ill-conceived, racist programs have had a devastating impact on African American men, women and children. Bill Clinton was another Democratic president who sold out his core constituency for the Republican vote. We rewarded him with the title of First Black President.

I agree with Senator Warren that the Democratic Party must change course and I agree it cannot be by a move to the center. It must change course by embracing, first and foremost, the issues important to its core constituency. Mass incarceration, substandard education and underemployment. Without our support the Democratic Party is dead.

I would remind Senator Warren and the Democratic Party generally to remember the following facts:

Lest We Forget: A Brief History of the Democratic Party.

• The Democratic Party was founded by slaveholder Thomas Jefferson in 1792- the so-called Modern Democratic Party was organized in 1828.

• The Confederacy was the brain child of the Democratic Party.

• After the Civil War the Democratic Party tried a "new approach". They "downplayed" the Confederacy's defeat in the Civil War and focused on their true selling point -- white supremacy.

• For the next century the Democratic Party advocated, successfully legislated and enforced the Black Codes, segregation and the functional re-enslavement of African Americans in all but name. All in the name of white supremacy

• In the north the Democratic Party advocated change in the South but did nothing to counter racial discrimination in its own backyard.

• In the 1930's African Americans left the party of Lincoln to embrace Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" and again in the 1960's because of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society

• We did this despite the white supremacist past of the Democratic Party. We did it because it was in our best interest to do so ...

• Roosevelt's "New Deal and Johnson's "Great Society" were programs that promised to meet our present needs. Just remember: FDR's "New Deal" was the result of the economic devastation caused by the Great Depression. Johnson's "Great Society" was a response to widespread American poverty. These programs were created to address the needs of the white majority - African Americans benefitted only coincidentally.

We welcome and embrace true progress. We also recognize, however, that our current conditions are in many ways a direct result of the white supremacist policies of the Democratic Party advocated, implemented and enforced at the federal, state and local levels from the White House to the outhouse for more than a century.

Do not take us for granted ...We can fight with you or against you!

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Johnnie Cordero holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Doctorate in Jurisprudence. He is the author of Total Black Empowerment: A Guide to Critical Thinking in the Age of Trump.