The Wrong Side of History: Social Conservatism Has Never Been a Friend To Black People. And an Enemy of My Friend Is...

I recently read that Strom Thurmond tried to get the FBI to build a case against Martin Luther King Jr. His tactic: get King arrested as a Communist.

It's hard for me to believe that anyone was against Martin Luther King. But a lot of people were. A lot of Christians. I lot of white Christians. As a white Christian, this is a real sore spot for me. It was for King, too, and he lays it out in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

The words he wrote in the middle of that letter cut me to the core, when I read them in my bedroom, one February morning in 2000.

"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

In light of that, I wanted to print a quote from a recent column by Leonard Pitts, Jr., a Pulitizer Prize winning columnist for the Miami Herald.

Let me point out something that ought to be obvious: Social conservatism has never been a friend to black people. And here, I am not talking about the conservatism of small government, low taxes and strong defense. Rather, I refer to the self-appointed defenders of so-called traditional values.

Once upon a time, those folks called themselves Southern Democrats. These days, they are Republican religious conservatives. Not that it matters. What's important is the simple fact that the traditional values position on matters of specific importance to African Americans has never once been validated by history. Whether the issue was slavery, segregation, lynching, voting rights or housing discrimination, social conservatives have always taken a postion that history later judged to be ignorant and flat-out wrong. They have a similarly abysmal track record with regard to women's rights and anti-Semitism.

Which leaves me at a loss to understand why any African American possessed of a functioning brain would give this atavistic bunch the time of day.

Because the Bible tells them to?

Would this be the same Bible that once told social conservatives they had a divine duty to kidnap and enslave Africans? The same one that justified them in hacking to pieces any black man who cast a stray glance toward a white woman?

Give me a break.

HEIGHT OF HYPOCRISY

It would be the height of stupidity for African Americans to align themselves with those whose philosophical forefathers maintained the machinery of our subjugation. It would be the height of hypocrisy to do so in an effort to deny someone else their civil rights.

But I can see it happening. Homo-hysteria is sweeping this country like the Red Scare did in the 1950s. Then, as now, opportunistic politicians are not above using unreasoned fear to further their careers.

Still, shame on any African American who joins this retrogressive crusade. Social conservatives have been on the wrong side of virtually every previous American freedom movement.

News flash: They're on the wrong side of this one, too.

Because I teach "the poor," I care about them. Which is why I distrust social conservatism. Which today, would mean Republicans. Rich Republicans. Rich white Republicans. I'm not saying that the other side is much better. But I fundamentally distrust social conservatism.

They have a history of getting it wrong.