Black Voters and the Battered Voter Syndrome

By George Boykin

Black voters remain defiantly loyal to Obama, despite suffering from his mishandling of the economy and Maxine Waters' complaints about his focus on wooing white independent voters for his reelection. But of course, Democrats have long taken blacks for granted. This loyalty in the face of bad treatment is reminiscent of battered wife syndrome (BWS).

Unfortunately, the vast majority of black voters have been bitch-slapped so for so long by the Democratic Party that many seem to be afflicted with the battered voter syndrome (BVS).

Psychologists tell us that BWS is a physical and psychological condition characterized by violence and learned helplessness in women who are repeatedly abused by their husbands. BWS is used to explain why abused women do not seek assistance from others, nor fight their abusers, nor leave the abusive situation. Victims believe that the abuse is not the fault of the abuser; rather, the abuse originates from sources not related to the abuser. They often become aggressive or abusive to others who attempt to offer assistance. Victims will repeatedly seek out their very abuser for comfort after each incident of abuse.

Similarly, the relationship between black voters and the Democratic Party displays many of the clinically diagnosed pathologies found in BWS: decimating abuse of the black family perpetrated by 40 years of Democratic Party welfare legislation; learned helplessness, making it nearly impossible to fight the abuse or escape the abuser; profound belief that the source of the abuse originates from sources other than the Democratic Party; aggressive and abusive treatment of others -- the so-called "Uncle Toms" and white racists -- who attempt to offer assistance; habitually seeking out the Democratic Party for succor from the very abuse perpetrated by the Democratic Party.

As the battered wife is fiercely loyal to her abusive husband, so are black voters fiercely loyal to the Democratic Party and to Barack Obama, the "African-American" leader of the Democratic Party. Is there any wonder that Maxine Waters could rant with impunity before an approving audience of job-seeking supplicants? "As far as I'm concerned -- the Tea Party can go straight to hell." The California congresswoman knew her demagoguery would be favorably received by helpless victims of the battered voter syndrome.

No amount of demagoguery, however, can deny that liberalism has had disastrous consequences for black America. For example, take the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that "prevailing wages" be paid on all federally financed or assisted construction projects. This racist legislation has been on the books since 1931. It is a pro-union law that had the original intent of driving black workers out of the construction and building trades industries. During the 1931 congressional debate, Rep. Clayton Allgood, D-Ala., stated: "Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. This is a fact. That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country." In 2011, Davis-Bacon still serves the purpose of discriminating against non-union black construction contractors and black construction workers because it prevents rural and inner-city laborers and contractors from working on federally financed construction projects in their own communities.

Periodically, Davis-Bacon comes up for repeal by Congress because of its racist intent. Incredibly, the Congressional Black Caucus typically stands at the forefront of defending the indefensible! In a letter to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce dated April 13, 2011, the Congressional Black Caucus, as a co-signer of the letter, outrageously attempted to revise the racist history of Davis-Bacon in the following:

Prior to the enactment of Davis-Bacon in 1931, there were many shocking examples of abusive practices and wholesale exploitation of female and minority workers on construction sites. For the last 80 years, the Davis-Bacon Act has protected the wages of all construction workers, including minorities and women, who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.

We believe that Davis-Bacon has been instrumental in bridging the wage gap for historically disadvantaged sectors of our society. In the face of decaying social and economic opportunities, this measure provides women and minorities with an important tool to achieving greater parity with their mainstream counterparts. The direct and indirect positive effects of Davis-Bacon prevailing wage regulations make them a prudent and beneficial policy. Additionally, Davis-Bacon prevailing wage have no adverse economic impact.

Davis-Bacon should have long ago died a rightly deserved ignoble death, along with rest of the Jim Crow-era anti-black legislation. Rather, Barack Hussein Obama, with the enthusiastic participation of the Congressional Black Caucus, not only rejuvenated this abomination to its original racist vigor, but he and they put Davis-Bacon on steroids. According to an All-Agency Memorandum issued by the Department of Labor, Davis-Bacon now applies to all "projects funded directly by or assisted in whole or in part by and through the Federal Government." In other words, this malignancy is metastasized. Projects that are only partially funded by ARRA must now obey the racist mandates of Davis-Bacon.

Equally disgusting as Davis-Bacon in Obama bitch-slapping black voters to curry favor with the unions is the Project Labor Agreement (PLA). A PLA requires all contractors, unionized or not, to subject themselves and their employees to unionization in order to work on a government-funded construction project. In order to receive a federal contract, a contractor must sign the agreement and subject its employees to union control. Obama signed this job-killing executive order on February 6, 2009, less than 3 weeks after assuming the office of president ostensibly to "promote economy and efficiency in Federal procurement[.]"

It's not surprising that Harry Alford, CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, would denounce PLAs with his statement: Show me a PLA and I will show you Jim Crow employment plus a locking out of most Black-owned firms that happen to be nonunion most of the time. A Project Labor Agreement is a license to discriminate against Black workers.

The proof of Obama and the Democrats bitch-slapping black voters is in the pudding. According to CNN, 96 percent of blacks voted for Obama in 2008. However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the total 9.1 million construction workers in 2010, only 491,000 (5.3 percent) were black. Construction and building trades unions are loath to reveal the racial composition of their membership, but it's easy to surmise that finding a black union construction worker is only slightly less challenging than finding a chicken with lips. The BLS informs us that only 13.1 percent of all construction workers belonged to unions in 2010. Being generous by using the same percentage against the 491,000 black construction workers, you arrive at a highly unlikely 64,000 total black union construction workers in all of the United States of America. Even this figure does not withstand anecdotal credibility, as evidenced by anybody driving through a federally financed construction zone on our nation's streets and highways and taking a head count of the number of non-white workers. Black contractors don't fare any better than black construction workers. According to Harry Alford of the NBCC, only 1.4 percent of federally funded highway construction contracts go to black contractors.

Given the Obama and Democratic Party's racist exclusion of blacks from the construction industry, is there any question why black unemployment is currently at the "official rate" of 16.2 percent with real unemployment above 30 percent? One needs look no further than the masochistic devotion of black voters to being bitch-slapped by Obama and the Democratic Party.