By BARBARA HOWARD

I’ve been writing about what I call “The Politics of Blackness” for about 20 years now in an effort to awaken Black Folks to the reality around them and show them how they are being used to others’ advantage and to their own demise. While some have opened their eyes, a lot of people are still blind to what is right in front of them.

Let’s look at the daily news breaking with allegations of sexual harassment. Where are the Black women? Where is their rage?

Drowned by their silence. As a professional and a woman business owner, I have faced sexual harassment for years, as well as every other Black woman I know.

In my conversations with other professionals, we all agreed that, even for those of us who worked within the white world, the brothers were always the worse. Yet you only see white women calling the men out – even Black Congressman John Conyers.

Again, it seems that racism is the only issue that will make Black folk speak out. I remember when a well known city mayor visiting Miami for a Black Mayors’ Conference sent his minions to invite me to his hotel room after the events. Of course I turned him down.

But it wasn’t just politicians, we know of preachers, teachers, presidents & directors of non-profit organizations (even the NAACP) or just staff, who have regularly harassed the women under their management or just within their reach.

Yet while white women are shedding tears (sometimes fake) on national TV, Black women are eerily silent. Only when they are forced (like Anita Hill) do they speak out. So the abuse goes on.

Again, only racism or the perception of racism gets played out. Which brings me to my next area of angst.

For the past 60+ years, the Democrats have controlled the perceptions of Black folk. In an effort to keep us on their plantation after the dismantling of Jim Crow and forced segregation, they have switched our focus from their real racism and deflected that reality into a false perception of all Republicans as the racists.

When George Bush was POTUS, Democrats made him to be the biggest racist ever. Yet one of his best and oldest friends was a Black preacher in Texas who presided over his daughter’s wedding. Democrats accused the entire Bush family of being racist.

Yet I watched Jeb’s mother, Barbara Bush, beam with pride as Jeb sat in the Liberty City Charter School with a bunch of little Black kids hugging his neck, sitting on his lap, and playing with him. I learned that everything I had heard about the Bush family was a baldfaced lie, orchestrated to keep Black folk hating them and loyal to the Democratic Party.

This past weekend is a prime example. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum opened in Jackson, Mississippi and President Trump showed up to give his blessing. Yet Democratic Congressmen John Lewis of Georgia and Bernie Thompson of Mississippi and others refused to even attend. The NAACP joined in their disgust.

So when these Democrats call Republicans racist and then Republicans show them they are not, the Democrats, especially Black politicians, show more loyalty to the Democratic Party than they do to the Black community. They will never give credit to Republicans for anything they do to and for the Black community.

On all things positive that Republicans do, Black folk are silent. The pastor Sunday talked about forgiveness. As we ask the Lord for forgiveness for our sins, we must be mindful to forgive others.

Democrats control every inner city in the nation, thereby controlling Black folk and their communities, steeped in drugs, crime, illiteracy, high teenage pregnancies, and fatherless families. But the only thing you hear Black so-called “leaders” complain about is racism, going back 200 years to slavery. No forgiveness there.

But while Black “leaders” were trying to humiliate Trump for coming to the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, a real threat to our democracy was happening in New York where a radical Islamic terrorist attempted to blow up the rail system in NY.

The Times Square terrorist suspect didn’t care whether the people he wanted to blow up were white or black, Democrat or Republican. We were all Americans, who he hated.

We’d better learn to see who the real enemy is and silence is no longer an option.