Stephen A. Smith of ESPN said blacks should vote Republican, at least once, while speaking at the Impact Symposium at Vanderbilt University, Breitbart News reported today. The symposium, where Smith spoke, was titled “How You See It: Perceptions of (In)Equality.” By voting almost entirely for Democrats, black voters are taken for granted by Democrats and ignored by Republicans who don’t get their votes, Stephen A. Smith pointed out in his speech.
“What I dream is that for one election, just one, every black person in America vote Republican,” he said. “Because from what I’ve read, and I’m open to correction, but from what I’ve read, Barry Goldwater is going against Lyndon B. Johnson. He’s your Republican candidate. He is completely against the Civil Rights Movement. Lyndon B. Johnson was in favor of it. What happens is, he wins office, Barry Goldwater loses office,” Stephen A. Smith said, “but there was a senate, a Republican senate, that pushed the votes to the president’s desk. It was the Democrats who were against Civil Rights legislation. So because President Lyndon B. Johnson was a Democrat, black America assumed the Democrats were for it.”
Smith then outlined how one party has come to assume they will get the votes of African-Americans and how the other party doesn’t believe they will get their votes and therefore doesn’t have to compete for those votes. This situation, as Stephen A. Smith outlined in his speech, leads to neither party doing much for the interests of black voters.
“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,” Stephen A. Smith said.
There is one GOP candidate for president who is urging African-Americans to do just that, vote Republican. That candidate, Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, is courting black voters, the Weekly Standard reported last week.
“Paul-watchers will be familiar with his general pitch to black voters and how it hinges on criminal justice reform. Several features of the criminal justice system—civil forfeiture of property, mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent drug offenses, a lifetime criminal record—are all, in Paul’s view, un-American as well as unfairly burdensome to racial minorities. Republicans can and should offer public policy remedies to these problems, Paul says, and it just so happens that he’s offering a few in the U.S. Senate alongside Democrats like New Jersey’s Cory Booker (who is black),” the Weekly Standard reported.
This latest commentary by Stephen A. Smith is not the first time the ESPN sportscaster has weighed in on controversial issues. Smith also commented about the riots and protests in Ferguson, Missouri last year, the Inquisitr reported . Smith had tweeted about the riots, that “All sides needed 2 chill.”
[Images of Stephen A. Smith from Breitbart News ]
