Ice Cube’s decision to meet with the current administration to discuss his much debated Contract with Black America with Trump’s advisers has enraged, “Black Twitter,” Liberals, Leftists and the PC crowd! But why should it? As a business owner and concerned citizen, Cube advanced a Black agenda to both parties, and both parties recognizing the influence of Cube reached back.
One party said, we would love to talk to you AFTER the election. The other party invited his input for their Black agenda BEFORE the election!
It is not a mark of realness to be a Democrat nor does it invalidate one’s Black authenticity, to be a Republican. Our religion is about passion, love and hope. Politics is more transactional, you don’t have to believe in politicians. Indeed you probably shouldn’t, and that is why it is even possible to do business with a terrible president! As Black people became more culturally aware and America has embraced more diversity, we’ve long since judged in our pluralistic society that religious fundamentalism is intolerant and regressive. Well political fundamentalism is just as unenlightened and counterproductive to Black empowerment. Thus it is troubling to see the level of personal attacks on Ice Cube. As a reformed fundamentalist people, we’ve grown accustomed to having a Muslim, Christian, Black Nationalist and an atheist at the family Thanksgiving dinner table, at Granny’s house. We too can get use to a progressive Democrat, conservative or moderate Republican and a Democratic Socialist at the Easter family dinner table too. We cannot disinvite family members as important as Jim Brown and Ice Cube from dinner, simply because they have a different political outlook.
The PC crowd is angry because the “wrong party” invited Cube to the party, and as a free Black man he accepted the invitation. The problem? Democrats since the 1960s have enjoyed near total hegemony in our community at the presidential level, if Blacks even dreamt about talking to Republican’s, they were supposed to wake up immediately and effusively apologize. Apparently the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation hasn’t made it to the national headquarters of the DNC yet. Memo to Democrats: We are a free people, and we can be what we want to be, we can even talk to both parties and when the Republicans do SOME GOOD, (as I believe Trump’s prison reform and criminal justice reform efforts were) we can’t cynically ignore, or dismiss these initiatives and if they represent a positive step in the right direction, we are justified in standing with him when he signs those kinds of bills, even as our fellow Democrats like Chuck Schumer crossed party lines and stood with Trump when he moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, saying the embassy move was “long overdue.” Politics makes strange bedfellows, but that is the way the system works. We must learn to play the system, thus far the system has been playing us!
Let’s face it, we have a two-party system in American politics. What people like Ice Cube, Jim Brown, Robert L. Woodson and I understand, is the old adage, “in politics, there are no permanent enemies, no permanent friends, only permanent interests.” The fact is that Republican’s win presidential elections, most of the time. Thus why should Blacks be any different from Jews, Latinx, Catholic and Women voters, and have a more diversified electorate, it’s the only intelligent way of playing politics. Thus more Blacks in the Republican Party means, for us, whatever party wins, Blacks have representatives in place to advocate for our people. Ice Cube is merely doing what the heads of our civil rights organizations should be doing. Working with the person in the White House for their constituents, not simply keeping Blacks angry and disenfranchised for four years or eight years, pouting and with arms folded, waiting to exhale when finally a Democrat assumes the office again. Leaders have a fiduciary responsibility to our people to always advocate for our people with the power or president, whether our CHOICE sits in 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. or not. In fact I have argued that 30% of our number should establish a beachhead in the Republican Party and like special forces fight for a strategic position for Blacks in the party of Lincoln. I would have confidence in an outfit with fighters like Jim Brown and Ice Cube leading the charge!
Obviously the majority of our people will keep our ties with the Democratic Party, because All Politics are local. What I’m talking about is a nuanced political praxis that is very group self-interested, I am a lifelong Democrat, I have always been a Democrat, I live in Kings County the most Democratic county in America, I enjoy close friendships with local, state and federally-elected Democrat politicians in New York, I will always vote Democratic (although as a Free Black Man, I reserve the right not to, if I want to. In the words of Bobby Brown, “It’s my prerogative.”) However locally, voting for one party makes sense to me because I know the elected officials, I’ve seen the tangible fruits of their labor. Yet in presidential elections, it is in my view rather shortsighted to invest all of our political capital in one party, they might just lose. In fact, in my 56 years of life only 24 of those years have been under Democratic Party presidents. Thus we’ve spent the equivalent of 32 years during my lifetime disenfranchised and waiting outside the White House in irrelevancy, waiting on a Democratic Party president before we could breath.
So Cube is not off base, and he certainly has committed no foul against his people, he is simply operating intelligently in a two-party system, so stop disrespecting Cube, even if you have political differences with his decision––but in the spirit of being Woke, my liberal friends need to practice what they preach! Tolerance! No bullying, Diversity, The New Black. Don’t be hypocrites, and don’t stereotype Blacks and assume that Blacks have to vote one way, and to borrow a phrase from a disrespected rapper from New Orleans, Put some R-E-S-P-E-K on Ice Cube’s name because some of us are “born this way,” that is, to be free Men and Women not confined politically to one narrative!
Rev. Conrad B. Tillard Sr. M.Div., Th.M. is the senior minister at Flatbush Tompkins Congregational Church in Brooklyn and the host of “Conversations With Conrad” on WHCR 90.3 FM, the Voice of Harlem.