infinite improbability

I'm a Black Republican

Well, I'm obviously not a black republican. But I did join the SaraMana Black Republican Club. I'm not generally the sort of person to join clubs associated with political parties--too much rah-rah-we-love-the-party stuff, which I am way too cynical to go along with. The black republican club, however, has more substance than the other republican clubs--they're actually wanting to do something to make people's lives better, rather than just getting together and talking about how much they like the republican party. One of their major goals (in addition to getting more black republicans elected), is to support faith-based community development initiatives. Their big frustration with the democratic party is that they have been talking about the same issues--housing, jobs--for the last 50 years, but they haven't delivered. So, instead of listening to the same tired old promises from the democrats and voting democratic, they've given up on the democratic party. The democrats have taken the black vote for granted (which is actually the point that Al Sharpton made in the democratic presidential debate, where he said something to the effect of "we brought them to the party, but they left with someone else," meaning that the democrats couldn't get elected without the black vote, but after the election, they don't do anything).

At this point, the republican party is falling all over themselves to get the black vote. I think that Florida in 2000 was a wakeup call for republican leadership--they would have lost Florida if they hadn't managed to get even the tiny percentage of the black vote that they got. One upshot of this increased effort to get the support of black voters is that the local republican legislative delegation has offered to do anything that the black republican club needs. This is a good thing, because the black republican club has decided to either start their own faith-based community development initiative, or to help support an existing faith-based initiative, and have formed a steering committee to investigate the possibilities (I am the white face on the committee). There is a lot of state and federal dollars available for funding faith-based programs, and the republican politicans are offering to do everything they can to help get some of those funds for an initiative in Manatee county.