BLACK CONSERVATIVE & OBAMA ENIGMA

I will be posting a new column later today (Tuesday, about 5 p.m.) but for now I want to keep featuring Lloyd Marcus' fascinating "Confessions" (scroll down a few lines). My next column will begin with the following quote from Martin Amis' satirical book called Money: "My theory is -- we don't really go that far into other people, even when we think we do. We hardly ever go in and bring them out. We just stand at the jaws of the cave, and strike a match, and quickly ask if anybody's there." What I've been trying recently is to "bring out" the real Barack Obama -- particularly to determine why says one thing in his books and something very different in his speeches and commercials. Who is Barack Obama? And does he even know the answer to that question?


Dear Friends: I hope you'll read Larry Perrault's fine essay titled, "Why Conservatives MUST Support John McCain." A Texan, Larry has been a strong and effective supporter of Mike Huckabee, but like the vast majority of people who "like Mike," he's now behind Senator McCain. You can find his piece at: http://larryperrault.blogspot.com.


Lloyd Marcus (above), then . . .

Here's a powerful autobiographical piece by an important Black conservative, Lloyd Marcus. Later today (Monday), I'll write below Lloyd's piece about how McCain must appeal to Black moderates and conservatives -- frankly, a huge group -- in his race for the presidency against Barack Obama. I met Lloyd on the Black Conservatives (Yahoo) Group. I urge everyone to join that group, whether you're a Black conservative or moderate or a supporter or that political group. I also urge people to back an allied group, The National Black Republicans Association. If John McCain can win 20% of the Black vote (rather than Republicans' usual 10%), he might carry 45 or more states in the general election.

Confessions of a Black Conservative

A urine smell permeated the stairwell. In the darkness, due to smashed light bulbs, the sound of broken wine bottles underfoot echoed off the concrete walls. I was nine years old. With the elevators out of service half of the time due to vandalism, many times I was forced to take the scary trek into the shadow of death up the stairwell to our sixth floor apartment in the projects of East Baltimore.

This was a far cry from the brand spanking new building we moved into just two years earlier. I remember our excitement when my parents, three younger siblings and I moved in our apartment. It was a dream come true moving from our leaky roof ghetto into a place where everything including the appliances were new. We were one of the first in the eleven story all black residents building. While a few people kept their apartments lovely, most seemed committed to destroying the building.

All I kept hearing was that everything was the 'white man's fault'. Even at age nine, I sarcastically thought to myself, “how can we stop these evil white people from sneaking in here at night peeing in the stairwell, leaving broken wine bottles, smashing the light bulbs and attacking people?”.
My early experience living in the government project taught me that some folks simply have a ghetto mindset. I also witnessed the trap of government welfare. And why was so many around me angry and violent despite getting free housing, food and health care?

It was the late 50s when my dad was one of the first blacks to break the color barrier into the Baltimore Fire Dept. The sight of him in his crisp dress blue firefighter uniform made everyone proud, though none more than me. With dad's new job, the government raised our rent to $72. per month. I remember my dad saying, “Seventy-two dollars! They must be crazy. We're movin'!” We moved to a suburban black community. I truly believe I would not be who I am today had we stayed in the projects.

Several of my cousins stayed enslaved to the system and the bigotry of low expectations. Because true self esteem comes from personal achievement, they possessed very little. They lived angry and bitter lives consumed with serial impregnating, out of wedlock births and substance abuse. An outrageously high number died prematurely.

So when I hear politicians pandering to the so-called poor of America, it turns my stomach. I've witnessed the deterioration of the human spirit, wasted lives and suffering that happens when government becomes 'daddy'.

Lloyd Marcus

Deltona, FL
http://lloydmarcus.net/


The following is a comment by another Black conservative, Randy, on Obama's relationship with his America-hating pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright:

Pastor Wright's mentoring and advice to Obama can have policy effects that can damage the entire country, and possibly even damage the entire world.As for the excuse that Obama is "guilty by association", there is a simple way to fix that. Obama must disassociate, fully and completely and specifically regarding any anti-American policies or statements. No evasions, no weasel words, no equivocations, no moral equivalency.Unless, of course, Obama is only running for the Presidency of the angry blacks of America.It is an issue for many people, so it must be addressed. His choice.

--Randy