by Stacey Dash
Black folks in America are telling one party, “We don’t give a damn about you.” They’re telling the other party, “You’ve got our vote.” Therefore, you have labeled yourself “disenfranchised” because one party knows they’ve got you under their thumb. The other party knows they’ll never get you and nobody comes to address your interest. . . . I hate the fact that anyone believes that they have a bloc of people in the palm of their hands. That disgusts me. That’s never good for America.1
He’s right, though he only went so far as to say blacks should vote Republican en masse for just one election . . . to turn over the apple cart, so to speak. That doesn’t go far enough, though I confess I had the mentality Smith described—blindly following the Democrats—until the Romney/Obama race.
In 2008, I’d never voted before in my life, but I thought it was time for us to have a black president who could unite us in a profound way. Everyone around me was voting for him, so I cast my virgin vote for a savior who would bring healing and racial harmony. I guess I believed all that shit he shoveled about stopping the oceans’ rise and making the world’s troubles fade into fairy tales. As it turns out, I was the one believing in fairy tales . . . that a community organizer could change the world? Did we support him because he was black? Because he looked good on the cover of GQ and Ebony? Because he gave good speeches?
Obama defended the soaring rhetoric he was fed from his teleprompter in a speech about the power of “just words.” He compared his words to those used by great people like Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson, and FDR.
But they didn’t just give good speeches. They did great things.
Sure Obama is good with words. But in the Bronx where I grew up, what you do means more than what you say. I’ve heard plenty of talk from people who want something. Lots of guys have tried that shit on me. I get it. I guess I just didn’t expect it from him. I didn’t expect this lawyer from Chicago to try to manipulate uninformed black people to vote for him because of the color of his skin. But that’s exactly what he did.
When I watched the debates in 2012, I could see it in his eyes—Obama was not being honest, truthful, or transparent. He was always being evasive in his answers. In the Bronx, we call it “talking out the side of your neck.” There, if you want me to respect you and listen to what you say, you look me in the eyes or we’re not going to talk.
Also, I started noticing how everything suddenly seemed to be about race. How can that be? We elected a black president. Why are we still talking constantly about race? The sad truth I only learned gradually—after I’d pulled the lever for him—was that Obama was using his race to advance his own progressive agenda. He wasn’t being honest about what he was trying to accomplish in America. His strategy was obvious—to take advantage of the uninformed to win. I thought Obama had everyone’s best interests at heart, especially the best interests of black people. I figured if anyone would know how to lead us to a better place it would be someone who rose from humble beginnings to become the first black president of the United States. It didn’t turn out that way, of course. How could he make things worse for all of America—especially for blacks—and yet we kept supporting him?
Even worse, those who were opposed to him—like the two black Republican women at Lola’s school—were too ashamed or fearful to admit it?
Please.
We’ve been deceived by race-mongers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who profit from pretending it’s still 1965. We’ve been fooled into believing that there’s still a battle to be fought over race in this country. But here’s a newsflash—we won the Civil Rights Movement. We have all the opportunities we could ever need. All we have to do is walk in them. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian—whatever your color and whatever your ethnic background—no one is keeping you down in America but you. Well, you and the Democratic Party that wants to manipulate your vote.
Prior to 2008, black support for the Democratic Party presidential candidate was pretty consistent, between 83 and 90 percent, going back to 1980. But Obama managed to get even more support—95 percent in 2008. Given the historic nature of his candidacy, it’s understandable that a record number of blacks turned out to vote. I was one of them. But after four years of seeing how destructive his policies were to minorities, even more of us showed up. I’m ashamed to say that 93 percent of blacks voted for an administration that has only made things worse for race relations in America.
Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool me twice? Well, it’s my problem if I choose to stay ignorant.
I was greatly influenced by a YouTube video of National Review’s William F. Buckley debating author James Baldwin in 1965 at Cambridge University. Buckley said to Baldwin, “The question . . . is not whether we should’ve purchased slaves generations ago, or ought the blacks to have sold us those slaves. The question rather is this: Is there anything in the American dream which intrinsically argues against some kind of deliverance from the system that we all recognize as evil? What shall we do about it?”
In other words, slavery happened. It’s time to move on and go beyond what those evil men had in mind when they put shackles on us so long ago. There’s no instant cure for our race issues, but we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of renouncing the American dream, Buckley said that blacks should address their “own people and urge them to take advantage of those opportunities which do exist and urging us to make those opportunities wider. . . . If it finally does come to a confrontation between giving up the best features of the American way of life and fighting for them, then we will fight the issue.”
Buckley was right. Instead of giving blacks cynicism and despair, we should offer people the tools to succeed, point people to the American dream, and see what enterprising Americans can do.
And we black Americans are enterprising. In the South Bronx, I saw it up close. The hustlers, the pimps, the dealers were doing what it took to avoid the shame of welfare. Yes, shame. Anyone who received government assistance was considered to be lazy and second-rate. They were mocked and teased. Because welfare was so stigmatized, people did other things—usually illegal—to make ends meet. In the logic of the streets, hustling was respected because you were working to make your money. The hustlers lived by a strict code of respect, loyalty, courage, and honor. Plus, it’s interesting to note that these hustlers, these pimps, these dealers are natural capitalists. . . . They make money, they want to keep their money. They’re not giving their money away, and Lord help anyone who tries to take it from them—even a dime.
Most black people are Republicans and they don’t even know it, because the so-called black leaders on television try to keep them addicted to the tranquilizing drug of liberalism. But every single person is born with an inherent knowledge that what they earn, they should be able to keep. Most black people don’t want the government in their business, meddling in things big or small. Most black people believe in a powerful defense. You better believe people in the Bronx sleep with guns under their mattresses and want a government that’s also ready and able to defend Americans.
It’s time to snap out of it. It’s time to wake up.
I think a lot of black people don’t want to vote Republican because they believe the lie that Republicans are racists, that Republicans don’t like them. That’s completely false. Republicans aren’t racist. In fact, they really want to get more black support and don’t know why they don’t. They look at the results of years of liberal policies in big cities, where poverty is still high, and wonder, “Why do you keep voting for the same people?
I wonder the same thing. Why do we keep voting for people who’ve failed us, who take us for granted? A lot of black people are rightfully upset by what’s happening in our cities. Well, who do you think has been running our cities for decades? The Democratic Party. We keep doing the same things in the ballot box, hoping something will change. Isn’t one definition of insanity doing the same thing with the hope of different results? Sometimes I feel like the
whole pitch of the Democratic Party is something like this: “Your life may be bad now, but if the Republicans get in power, it will be worse.”
Well, I want to put that to the test. We’ve tried your way, and now it’s time for a different way. I’m ready to keep more of what I earn, free black kids from failed public schools, and think hard about the right kind of prison reform.
And one more thing—if the Democrats are so comfortable that they’ve got the right ideas, why do so many of them prefer name-calling to actual debate? I’ve never experienced as much online abuse as I did when I “came out” as a Republican. Debate my ideas. Your insults just tell me you’re weak.
FOUR
THE VOICE NO ONE HEARD
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
—Winston Churchill, quoted in the Chicago Tribune
Sometimes people look at me—with my California home and my Manhattan television gig—and think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. That my views on politics must have come from a place of privilege. After all, I’m black. How did I get the “white man’s” politics? Was I raised by someone who indoctrinated me from an early age—teaching me the ways of William F. Buckley from the womb?
Hardly. In my case, there was a spoon, but it wasn’t silver. It was gold and hung around my mother’s neck. She wore it like some mothers might wear their children’s baby spoons around their necks to remember the first few months of life. I loved the way it lay on her chest, the way it caught the light in certain rooms. Turns out, it was more utilitarian than decorative, because she used it to snort cocaine.
As a child, I didn’t know that, of course. I didn’t understand the challenges of drug addiction. I didn’t know that I came along when my mom was just a teenager. I had no comprehension of the stress my parents must’ve been under as a couple trying to make it in the Bronx with a new baby. I don’t remember exactly when they decided that I was too much for them, but I guess it could’ve been when I was two. That’s when they bundled me up and dropped me off at another family’s home in the projects . . . people, by the way, I’d never seen before. I walked in the door and the house smelled like urine. Above the pungent smell of poverty, the home also had a lingering smell of sofrito—a sauté of green peppers, onions, garlic, oregano, and bay leaves that seemed to be the basis of all the food they cooked. The smell permeated everything in the house, lingering even after the meals had been consumed.
“Clean your plate,” the mom would say, making sure I finished every crumb before telling me to go play. The father was strict and volatile—he’d give spankings for almost anything—but the mom did her best to take care of my physical needs. She always wore white, because the family practiced Santeria, a voodoo-like mix of Catholicism and superstition. I’m not sure whether my parents knew the family they had left me with practiced Santeria, or whether it would’ve mattered. But surely they must have noticed that the mom always wore white—like a ghost—and that there was a black muñeca, or spirit doll, perched in the kitchen window. The doll, with large creepy eyes, was supposedly protecting the home with her spiritual power. It didn’t work. I sensed a bad spirit in that house . . . something foreboding and dreadful.
“If he calls you to his room don’t even think about going.” The mom was speaking to me, very sternly, about the family’s teenaged son. Her tone scared me, and so did her ominous message, which caused me to keep to myself.
After I had lived with the family for a while, my parents showed up. I breathed a sigh of relief and ran into their arms. I thought I’d be going home, that the past month was a mistake . . . maybe something came up and they needed a babysitter. An emergency. However, after a quick visit, they took me right back to that house.
“Don’t leave me here!” I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe why it was so bad. My mom looked at the other mother, whose eyes narrowed a bit. “Oh, go on,” she smiled. “She’ll be fine.”
I scraped at the inside of the closed apartment door, screaming in my despair.
“I want to go home!” Then, I waited, silently hoping that I’d hear my parents on the other side of the door.
“Mommy?” I waited, hearing nothing. “Daddy?”
I could hear the sounds of normal life outside on the street. Kids playing, horns honking, traffic buzzing. But inside, I was trapped in a home that felt unsafe, that smelled of garlic, oregano, and pee. I propped myself up against the door, hoping my parents would return because maybe they would realize they’d forgotten something. Like, for example, me. Eventually, the dad came over with a leather belt and spanked me for crying.
For years, I spent most of my life cooped up, completely dependent on strangers. If I needed to cry, I’d go to the bathroom, sit on the toilet. The walls were peach. Occasionally, my parents would show up with big smiles, but they’d always bring me back when Sunday night came. I did go to preschool, which was a bright spot in an otherwise dreary existence. That’s when I began to love education as a way to escape the bad hand I’d been dealt. I’d come home from preschool and watch cartoons. The girls in the family were too old to want to play with me. They were nice enough, but were more interested in boys, clothes, and hair than playing with a toddler.
One night I was playing with an old toy I’d found under a bed.
“Stacey, want some candy?” the brother called from the bedroom next door. I was bored, ignored, alone, and abandoned. If someone offered me candy—someone I saw every day, someone who was a part of what I viewed as my “fake family,” someone I trusted as much as anyone else in that house—I was going to take it. For one second, I paused. What was it that the mom had told me? Oh right. I wasn’t supposed to go in there. I had obeyed that instruction for a year. In fact, I’d never even seen his room. But what child can turn down candy?
I know. Cliché, right? I wish I could’ve told you that he pulled off an elaborate trick to entice me to come into his room, but a simple offer of candy caused me to put down the raggedy toy and walk right in. He shut the door behind me. My eyes probably scanned the room to see what sugary treat he had, but found none. I don’t remember exactly what happened in his room—this forbidden, off-limits place. But I do remember what happened when I left the room about a half hour later, my tights full of his ejaculate.
I ran my hands through this sticky stuff, but it wouldn’t come off. So I came out and walked over to the mom with my hands up in the air. I’m sure I looked like any small child needing help washing up, perhaps before a meal. But when she saw what was on my hands, the mom gasped.
“Why did you do that,” she cried. “I told you never to go in his room!” I was filled with shame and regret, though I had no idea what the substance was. I began to cry, as the mom desperately yanked off my tights and ran a rag over me.
I was never the same.
At preschool, I didn’t want to be around the rest of the children playing—the children who were so obviously cared for and loved . . . their moms walking them to school and waving sweetly as their kids disappeared into the school building. Instead, I’d go off by myself and watch the other girls and boys joyfully chasing each other and jumping rope.
The experience of sexual abuse has shaped my life in ways that I can’t really calculate. That feeling of “being used” by someone is not easily shaken. Even now, I’m haunted by it. And that deep-seated feeling of dread was exacerbated by a sick story that came out in the news.
When it was reported that outspoken conservative Josh Duggar—the oldest son of the 19 Kids & Counting family—had molested five girls, everyone was shocked . . . especially to learn that four of the victims were his sisters and one was a babysitter. Immediately, I felt sick to my stomach. I always do when I hear of abuse. However, it’s even worse when outspoken conservatives and advocates of “family values” are involved and don’t handle it straightforwardly. (Later, of course, Duggar was exposed during the Ashley Madison hacking, being revealed as someone seeking an extra-marital affair. . . . This was
after he let his family testify to his character and to how he had changed since he was younger.)
The reaction of conservative Christians and Republicans—some of whom seemed to be angrier at the reporting than they were at the abuse—was so distressing that it caused me to momentarily pause and think, “Do I really belong to a group of people who seem so unfazed by molestation? By crimes against children?” Republicans spend a lot of time bellyaching about the way that the liberal media hurts us by mischaracterizing us. In this case, however, we managed to embarrass ourselves without anyone’s help.
If Republicans want to be taken seriously, we had better start actually dealing with sex and sexual abuse in a real and meaningful way. Victims of sexual abuse don’t want to sit by and watch “celebrity Christians” or famous Republicans minimize sexual crimes. They certainly don’t want to see them pouring out an elaborate amount of sympathy for the abusers instead of the abused.
Can God forgive Josh Duggar? Of course. I rely on God’s grace as much as or more than anyone. But what Republicans cannot do is mimic the “cheap grace” of modern life . . . where “celebrities” make public apologies, then are immediately applauded for their “humility.” Then, after they establish that they’re sorry—really sorry!—they simply go right back to their lives without consequences.
Yes, Mark Sanford, I’m talking to you.
Do you remember that guy? He was governor of South Carolina when he disappeared for four days—the police and even his wife had no idea where he was. His staff said the governor claimed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail during this time, though he wasn’t answering his phone and didn’t call his family on Father’s Day. Turns out, he was with his Argentinian mistress, whom he claimed was his “soul mate.” Oops. He had betrayed his wife, his family, and his state, but he still managed to apologize his way to political redemption. He won a congressional seat and then unceremoniously announced on Facebook that he had broken up with his mistress.
