You Don't Have to be White to be Right (Conservative).

 

If ones only source of conservative content is Fox News, One America News Network or many online sites, one would conclude it's a White ideology, with a short list of Black folks making appearances or serving as regular contributors. As with liberalism, by virtue of this being a (shrinking) majority White country, that accounts for the predominant pigmentation of conservatism.

However, Black America has its own conservative traditions, independent of strains practiced by mainstream ones. We have religious conservatives whose fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam is as old school as any observed by ethnicities popularly considered representative of those faiths.

Our business and professional class, regardless of how they vote, are intensely conservative and not given to anything remotely considered "radical" or worse, "militant." Voting twice for Obama is about as risky as they get.

Ironically, even Black nationalists, often considered separatists, promote a conservative program of self help, self defense, self directed learning, institution building, community control of politics, entrepreneurship and showing elite liberal overlords the door when caught hijacking Black narratives or organizations.

It's only relatively recently in American history, since the Great Society and first wave Affirmative Action that there has been large scale Black access to the mainstream. We had our own parallel universe within the larger body politic and to a great extent, still do. The biggest encroachment into this space are elite liberals who feel they can dictate priorities and undermine autonomy wherever possible.

Conservative doesn't have to mean a xenophobic holding action by European Americans trying to stop systemic change at all costs. That's not my conservative tradition. Not in the least. Nor to be fair, is it that of European American conservatives who aren't racists.

While myself and mainstream conservatives from various wings share foundational views in common, my conservatism arose from self governing captives who hid autonomy to their American (initially in name only) progeny who built schools, businesses, places of worship, homes and self help organizations to nurture potential unwelcome elsewhere. Desegregation dealt our infrastructure a deathblow and left American Blacks integrating everything but mainstream economic power centers.

I understand, with soul deep certitude, that you don't have to be White to be Right, i.e., conservative, culturally or politically.

For this, I thank community builders who laid the foundation worlds ago.

It's not the Heritage Foundation, a mainstream think tank, which makes me conservative, it's always been the foundation of my heritage.