MANSFIELD: The Demise of the Fannie Lewis Law

The late Fanny Lewis

 

It was Will Rogers who once said, “I don’t belong to any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.” Indeed, it’s a truism of American politics that the Republican Party, over the last 100 or so years, has been much more organized than its counterparts to the left.

One of the prime reasons for this strong degree of organization within Republicans is the simple fact that the Party of Lincoln doesn’t have to concern itself with diversity. While Democrats like to boast about having a “big tent” that covers the concerns of a wide variety of citizens from environmentalists, minorities, the LGBTQ community and others interested in a fair and just society, Republicans, on the other hand, have a far narrower focus: the party exists to serve the wealthy, although its ranks include a goodly number of haters, kooks and white nationalists parading as patriots. Its goal is to assiduously protect the status quo by any means.

A prime example of how Republicans attempt to keep some Americans locked out of prosperity recently took place when the Ohio Supreme Court overruled Cleveland’s Fannie Lewis Law, which was put on the books to ensure fair treatment for minorities and women particularly in the construction trades. But in a 4-3 ruling along party lines, Republicans threw out a law that was designed to force publicly let contracts to be inclusive of women and minorities; in other words, a measure that was simply designed to level the playing field for those who have been locked out of good-paying construction jobs.

One of the most despicable tropes often echoed by enemies of black progress is that blacks don’t want to work, when those enemies often do everything in their power to keep us locked out of everything but the lowest-paying jobs.

So, while in some instances — such as the construction trades — Democrats who run the unions have worked to block black progress, but for the most part (going back to the Civil Rights legislation of the 60s) it has been the Republican Party that has worked stymie black economic, as well as other, gains.

Ideally, there would be a third political party that blacks could support, one that would pay closer attention to our wants, needs and desires. But the chance of another party coming into existence in America is nothing but a distant dream at this point. When do you hear anything about the Green Party, except at election time when it attempts to have an impact? Never.

For now and the foreseeable future, no matter how much better the Democratic Party could be doing in addressing our concerns and issues, we blacks are still far better off than we would be supporting the Republican Party under any circumstances. And any black that can’t see this is either politically blind or a fool.

From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.

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