This was the dilemma that preoccupied those who would rule the new nation. [James] Madison stated it clearly in the famous Federalist Paper Number Ten. Some kind of representative system was needed to maintain peace among the numerous factions in the new nation. But a representative system also posed dangers, for the factions to which Madison referred were not only those based on the numerous divisions of culture, region, or interest. The most serious and threatening factional division was that between the rich and poor, the division generated by "the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society." The true danger, then, was not a "faction"; it was a majority without property, a majority that could use democratic rights against minority.  

-Francis Fox-Piven & Richard A, Cloward, The New Class War (1982/1985) 
 

The problem with such sayings is that many folks take them for granted, and once accepted, they are taken as social truths. 

The exalted Black Human rights activist, Malcolm X once reasoned, "History is best regarded to reward our research." In that light, let us examine the historical role that has been played by the Democratic and the Republican party, especially during the critical period surrounding the American Civil War. 

Many people don't know that the Democratic party was overtly pro-slavery. Historian James M. McPherson, in his remarkable The Negro 's Civil War (1982) notes that none of the political parties of the time were in favor of abolishing the slave trade: 

In the second place, none of the four major parties contending for the presidency championed the cause of the Negro. The Constitutional Union party and the two factions of the Democratic Party were pledged to preserve or even to strengthen the institution of slavery. The Republican party, nominally anti-slavery, was officially opposed only to the extension of slavery into the news territories. 

No major political party proposed to take action against slavery where it already existed. During the campaign, Democrats charged that if the Republicans won the election, they would abolish slavery and grant civil equality to Negroes. "That is not so," rejoined Horace Greely, an influential Republican spokesman. "Never on earth did the Republican Party propose to abolish Slavery…Its object with respect to Slavery is simply, nakedly, avowedly, its restriction to the existing states."...Lincoln himself had repeatedly voiced his opposition to equal rights for free Negroes. (p.3) 

The political parties that were born, regenerated and remodeled after that great and bloody conflict still owe much to their patrimony under the years of bondage. As they were then, so they remain now, when the interests of African-Americans conflict with the interests on what they perceive as their central constituency- white Americans. 

In such a context, where politics is driven by the whims and wants of the white majority, the politics of a state becomes one essentially of "white supremacy," or the politics of domination, white class collaboration and the subordination of peoples of color. 

From such unpromising beginnings, today's parties do the treacherous business of politics. Whose interests do politicians protect? Whose interests do they serve? (Answer: Who can pay them?) 

In the throes of the social upheaval occasioned by the Civil Rights Movement there has been an explosion in the number of Black politicians in various levels and strata of the political system, with the logical result that Black politicians now are in their highest numbers in U.S. history. Are Black folks now represented in the Houses of Congress? Do they then, in any sense, exercise real power? Nothing can be farther from the truth. 

Representation, in the House or the Senate (or, for that matter, in the various state houses and general assemblies), is a far cry from power. The brilliant Nigerian author, Wole Soyinka, wrote, in the epic collection of poems, Mandela's earth: "When rulers meet, their embraces are of presence. Absent cries make empty phrases." Presence, even in the halls of political power, is not power. Black political representation in the white supremacist state, is symbolic, but not real, for they are constantly in such numerical inferiority that they can only align themselves with one or the other wing of the Big Bird in power. 

Black people are still without power, and are begging at the doors of two political parties that have taken turns spinning Black folks in varying directions, running from pillar-to-post, in search of a false illusion of power. One year, the Democrats are 'friends'; the next year, the Republicans are 'friends.' Yet, we remain, powerless in the Citadels of Power. 

©1998MAJ