Unfounded Loyalty - book review
Unfounded Loyalty: An In-Depth Look Into The Love Affair Between Blacks And Democrats
by
Unfounded Loyalty offers a profound look at the influences that have shaped the cultural development of modern Black America. The book re-examines historic assumptions about the role of Christianity and the Democratic Party as supporters of civil-rights and black voters. In an investigative style, Perryman reveals shocking events and deceptions which are part of America's untold history. Unfounded Loyalty is a compelling, well researched and documented historical study.
Warning, this is a subject of interest to me so this is going to be a very, very long review.
In contrast to most books that challenge the Democrats on their civil rights history, this one is authored by a left-leaning moderate rather than a conservative.
Despite the title, the first chapter isn't about Democrats (or Republicans) and civil rights, but about the long-standing Christian history of African Americans. This emphasis on the church and faith in God as the true solution to the problems plaguing African Americans is a theme that runs throughout the book.
In the second chapter, Rev. Perryman posits that during the period of integration (desegregation) African American culture became eroded through "assimilation" with mainstream American culture, particularly the new culture of the '60s that rejected traditional values.
This is an intellectual viewpoint that contrasts with those of conservative African American intellectuals such as Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams who suggest it is exactly the tendency of young blacks to reject such things as academic excellence as "acting white" to be the root of inequality in modern America (see Sowell's Inside American Education for a more detailed breakdown of this argument). Rev. Perryman inadvertently touches on this issue on page 30 when he describes how some blacks abandoned Christianity because they did not want to worship "a white man's God."
Rev. Perryman then uses the very odd example of American Jews to describe the "struggle with assimilation." He quotes Rabbi Halevy Donin's lament of the degree to which Jews allowed themselves to be assimilated by American culture. I say oddly because, as Thomas Sowell points out in several of his books, Jewish immigrants who arrived destitute in America and assimilated quickly climbed the economic and social ladder. An identical pattern has been observed in European immigrants in the past and the Asian immigrants of today. Both groups are so successful in socioeconomic terms that they are no longer included in the debate about American racial inequality.
What both Rev. Perryman and the conservatives agree on though, is that the entertainment industry has had a part in the degradation of African American culture, especially in the encouragement of self-degrading language (bitch, ho, the N-word, etc).
Regardless, Rev. Perryman returns to the theme of the first chapter, faith. He says that it is it is specifically the erosion of religious values that assimilation is to be blamed for, both for the blacks and the Jews. He also talks about how the role of faith in God held by civil rights figures has been erased from the history books (I would add textbooks and public school curriculum). He ends the chapter by listing off a host of ways in which African Americans are worse off now than they were before integration (desegregation), all of which are true. What is still confusing is that he attributes these problems to assimilation eroding religion, once again citing both blacks and Jews, when Jews are not suffering from the problems he lists as having befallen blacks. He does not address this discrepancy.
Rev. Perryman starts the third chapter with three lists. The first is a list of over a dozen government programs that were set up to correct discrimination over the last forty years. The second list is of a small number of minor improvements that have come about over the last forty years (some of which are rather dubious). The third list is of over two dozen major social disasters which have befallen blacks over the last four decades. The message is that relying on government instead of the church has made things worse. This is another area in which Rev. Perryman finds common ground with the conservatives, though they differ in the logic behind this conclusion. For a detailed explanation of why the government programs have done more harm than good, check out Williams' The State Against Blacks. A book that details how social welfare programs have caused the same problems in England for whites is Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple. For a detailed explanation of why faith-based programs are working, read Robert L. Woodson's The Triumphs of Joseph.
Starting with chapter four, Rev. Perryman finally addresses the issue at hand, the historic antagonism the Democratic party has had towards blacks, in acts both legal (i.e. Jim Crow laws in Southern Democratic states) and illegal (i.e. KKK terrorism). He lists a long and extensive (though by no means exhaustive) list of offenses, and summed his point up thusly, "The Southern Democrats did everything in their power, using both lethal and legislative tactics to make African Americans second-class citizens or to completely deny them their rights as a citizen."
For some reason, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, a racist retrograde who brought Jim Crow into the Federal bureaucracy, escapes mention in this history lesson. Rev. Perryman does touch on the first African American experiment with the Democratic party when major black-run newspapers endorsed FDR for President because "Republicans took their vote for granted." Unfortunately for them, FDR not only refused to desegregate the Federal government or the military, refused to endorse a federal anti-lynch law, and refused to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission, but in fact banned from the military the very same black newspapers that endorsed him. For some reason, Rev. Perryman does not mention that FDR appointed former KKK lawyer, U.S. Senator Hugo Black, to the Supreme Court.
Rev. Perryman also notes that blacks have the Republicans to thank for: the abolitionist movement and emancipation from slavery, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act 1866, Civil Rights Act of 1875, Civil Rights Act of 1957, and Civil Rights Act of 1960. In chapter seven he points out that it was the Democrats that strongly opposed all of these things.
Rev. Perryman concluded the chapter by saying that when the Africa American community chose to support the Democrats again in the '60s, they were inadvertently forced to support the social agendas of the radical Democrats who came to power (i.e. the sexual revolution), thereby compromising their traditional Christian values.
Chapter five can be summed up as: African Americans have been supporting Democrats for four decades and have nothing to show for it, and the Clinton administration was no exception.
Chapter six asks the reader to confront the lack of progress made by black political leaders on African American issues. Rev. Perryman makes the case that leaders like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the NAACP, and the Congressional Black Caucus abandoned black interests to provide support for liberal crusades such as gay rights. More to the point, and of particular concern to Rev. Perryman was the refusal of the aforementioned parties, and the Clinton Administration, to support black longshoremen when they launched a discrimination lawsuit against the Pacific Maritime Association and their unions back in 1995. Rev. Perryman also challenges the common misconception that the Democrats own the Affirmative Action issue. He points out that not only did a Republican administration create Affirmative Action, but that there is a great deal of support, as well as opposition, to Affirmative Action within the modern Republican Party, and that the Democratic Party has shown through their actions, or lack thereof, that Democrat support for Affirmative Action cannot be counted on.
Chapter seven can basically be boiled down to the following quote from that chapter:
1. Despite the Republicans' insensitivity on the racial issues of today, they, as a party, have never sponsored or launched a program, passed laws, or engaged in practices that resulted in the deaths of millions of African Americans.
2. According to leading historians (both black and white), the horrific atrocities committed against African Americans during slavery and Reconstruction were racist activities that were financed, sponsored, and promoted by the Democratic Party and their Klan supporters.
Rev. Perryman returns to the theme of faith-based uplift with chapter eight. It it, he highlights some of the spectacular accomplishments of faith-based Christian movements, of which he considers the Abolition Movement to be the greatest example. He also spends most of the chapter detailing the efforts of abolitionists and Republicans to improve the lives of blacks after emancipation through education programs in general, and black colleges in particular.
Chapter nine represents another point of consensus between Rev. Perryman and his conservative analogs. He points out that it is almost entirely through the efforts of the black community, rather than the government, that African Americans have achieved the level of prosperity they now enjoy (currently about a trillion dollars in buying power) in the time since emancipation. If blacks had waited for the government to provide this prosperity, they would still be waiting. The situation today is no different.
In the tenth chapter Rev. Perryman once again returns to his original theme, the need for African Americans to turn back to God. He stresses that the government (no matter which party is in power) has demonstrated that it lacks the capacity to achieve real change for blacks, that it is only through a unified African American community that real change can happen, and that without Christianity, there can be no unified black community.
While I personally feel the book suffers from a lack of understanding vis-a-vis economics in general and behavioral economics in particular, the author gets much more right than wrong. In terms of structure, the book suffers somewhat due to Rev. Perryman's habit of jumping back and forth between themes, but not to any extent that it obscures his message. His emphasis on the church as the basis for social stability and a unifying force might turn off some readers, but even as an agnostic, I can see the merit in his argument. Overall a worthwhile read.
In contrast to most books that challenge the Democrats on their civil rights history, this one is authored by a left-leaning moderate rather than a conservative.
Despite the title, the first chapter isn't about Democrats (or Republicans) and civil rights, but about the long-standing Christian history of African Americans. This emphasis on the church and faith in God as the true solution to the problems plaguing African Americans is a theme that runs throughout the book.
In the second chapter, Rev. Perryman posits that during the period of integration (desegregation) African American culture became eroded through "assimilation" with mainstream American culture, particularly the new culture of the '60s that rejected traditional values.
This is an intellectual viewpoint that contrasts with those of conservative African American intellectuals such as Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams who suggest it is exactly the tendency of young blacks to reject such things as academic excellence as "acting white" to be the root of inequality in modern America (see Sowell's Inside American Education for a more detailed breakdown of this argument). Rev. Perryman inadvertently touches on this issue on page 30 when he describes how some blacks abandoned Christianity because they did not want to worship "a white man's God."
Rev. Perryman then uses the very odd example of American Jews to describe the "struggle with assimilation." He quotes Rabbi Halevy Donin's lament of the degree to which Jews allowed themselves to be assimilated by American culture. I say oddly because, as Thomas Sowell points out in several of his books, Jewish immigrants who arrived destitute in America and assimilated quickly climbed the economic and social ladder. An identical pattern has been observed in European immigrants in the past and the Asian immigrants of today. Both groups are so successful in socioeconomic terms that they are no longer included in the debate about American racial inequality.
What both Rev. Perryman and the conservatives agree on though, is that the entertainment industry has had a part in the degradation of African American culture, especially in the encouragement of self-degrading language (bitch, ho, the N-word, etc).
Regardless, Rev. Perryman returns to the theme of the first chapter, faith. He says that it is it is specifically the erosion of religious values that assimilation is to be blamed for, both for the blacks and the Jews. He also talks about how the role of faith in God held by civil rights figures has been erased from the history books (I would add textbooks and public school curriculum). He ends the chapter by listing off a host of ways in which African Americans are worse off now than they were before integration (desegregation), all of which are true. What is still confusing is that he attributes these problems to assimilation eroding religion, once again citing both blacks and Jews, when Jews are not suffering from the problems he lists as having befallen blacks. He does not address this discrepancy.
Rev. Perryman starts the third chapter with three lists. The first is a list of over a dozen government programs that were set up to correct discrimination over the last forty years. The second list is of a small number of minor improvements that have come about over the last forty years (some of which are rather dubious). The third list is of over two dozen major social disasters which have befallen blacks over the last four decades. The message is that relying on government instead of the church has made things worse. This is another area in which Rev. Perryman finds common ground with the conservatives, though they differ in the logic behind this conclusion. For a detailed explanation of why the government programs have done more harm than good, check out Williams' The State Against Blacks. A book that details how social welfare programs have caused the same problems in England for whites is Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple. For a detailed explanation of why faith-based programs are working, read Robert L. Woodson's The Triumphs of Joseph.
Starting with chapter four, Rev. Perryman finally addresses the issue at hand, the historic antagonism the Democratic party has had towards blacks, in acts both legal (i.e. Jim Crow laws in Southern Democratic states) and illegal (i.e. KKK terrorism). He lists a long and extensive (though by no means exhaustive) list of offenses, and summed his point up thusly, "The Southern Democrats did everything in their power, using both lethal and legislative tactics to make African Americans second-class citizens or to completely deny them their rights as a citizen."
For some reason, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, a racist retrograde who brought Jim Crow into the Federal bureaucracy, escapes mention in this history lesson. Rev. Perryman does touch on the first African American experiment with the Democratic party when major black-run newspapers endorsed FDR for President because "Republicans took their vote for granted." Unfortunately for them, FDR not only refused to desegregate the Federal government or the military, refused to endorse a federal anti-lynch law, and refused to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission, but in fact banned from the military the very same black newspapers that endorsed him. For some reason, Rev. Perryman does not mention that FDR appointed former KKK lawyer, U.S. Senator Hugo Black, to the Supreme Court.
Rev. Perryman also notes that blacks have the Republicans to thank for: the abolitionist movement and emancipation from slavery, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act 1866, Civil Rights Act of 1875, Civil Rights Act of 1957, and Civil Rights Act of 1960. In chapter seven he points out that it was the Democrats that strongly opposed all of these things.
Rev. Perryman concluded the chapter by saying that when the Africa American community chose to support the Democrats again in the '60s, they were inadvertently forced to support the social agendas of the radical Democrats who came to power (i.e. the sexual revolution), thereby compromising their traditional Christian values.
Chapter five can be summed up as: African Americans have been supporting Democrats for four decades and have nothing to show for it, and the Clinton administration was no exception.
Chapter six asks the reader to confront the lack of progress made by black political leaders on African American issues. Rev. Perryman makes the case that leaders like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the NAACP, and the Congressional Black Caucus abandoned black interests to provide support for liberal crusades such as gay rights. More to the point, and of particular concern to Rev. Perryman was the refusal of the aforementioned parties, and the Clinton Administration, to support black longshoremen when they launched a discrimination lawsuit against the Pacific Maritime Association and their unions back in 1995. Rev. Perryman also challenges the common misconception that the Democrats own the Affirmative Action issue. He points out that not only did a Republican administration create Affirmative Action, but that there is a great deal of support, as well as opposition, to Affirmative Action within the modern Republican Party, and that the Democratic Party has shown through their actions, or lack thereof, that Democrat support for Affirmative Action cannot be counted on.
Chapter seven can basically be boiled down to the following quote from that chapter:
1. Despite the Republicans' insensitivity on the racial issues of today, they, as a party, have never sponsored or launched a program, passed laws, or engaged in practices that resulted in the deaths of millions of African Americans.
2. According to leading historians (both black and white), the horrific atrocities committed against African Americans during slavery and Reconstruction were racist activities that were financed, sponsored, and promoted by the Democratic Party and their Klan supporters.
Rev. Perryman returns to the theme of faith-based uplift with chapter eight. It it, he highlights some of the spectacular accomplishments of faith-based Christian movements, of which he considers the Abolition Movement to be the greatest example. He also spends most of the chapter detailing the efforts of abolitionists and Republicans to improve the lives of blacks after emancipation through education programs in general, and black colleges in particular.
Chapter nine represents another point of consensus between Rev. Perryman and his conservative analogs. He points out that it is almost entirely through the efforts of the black community, rather than the government, that African Americans have achieved the level of prosperity they now enjoy (currently about a trillion dollars in buying power) in the time since emancipation. If blacks had waited for the government to provide this prosperity, they would still be waiting. The situation today is no different.
In the tenth chapter Rev. Perryman once again returns to his original theme, the need for African Americans to turn back to God. He stresses that the government (no matter which party is in power) has demonstrated that it lacks the capacity to achieve real change for blacks, that it is only through a unified African American community that real change can happen, and that without Christianity, there can be no unified black community.
While I personally feel the book suffers from a lack of understanding vis-a-vis economics in general and behavioral economics in particular, the author gets much more right than wrong. In terms of structure, the book suffers somewhat due to Rev. Perryman's habit of jumping back and forth between themes, but not to any extent that it obscures his message. His emphasis on the church as the basis for social stability and a unifying force might turn off some readers, but even as an agnostic, I can see the merit in his argument. Overall a worthwhile read.
posted by Kerminator at 01:30
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