They Think You're Stupid by Herman Cain Read Free Book Online Page A

behavior in terms of voting, especially since 1936, is one of overwhelming support for Democratic candidates at the local, state, and federal levels.
    Since 1936, for example, support by Blacks for the Democratic presidential nominee has never dipped below 60 percent. This type of "brand loyalty" is of course desired by, and critical to the success of, Democratic candidates. The almost blind loyalty given by a majority of Blacks to the Democratic Party, however, is a phenomenon that some have equated to the sociological concept of groupthink .
    Groupthink is a concept described in 1982 by psychologist Irving Janis as "A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action."
    If we want to understand why groupthink exists in the Black electorate, as well as the nature of the racial divides that permeate the current political arena, we must first examine the political players and documents responsible for causing the divides.
    In 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court (USSC) established, in the Plessy v. Ferguson case, that "separate but equal" facilities, because they were "equal," did not violate the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause. Justice Henry Billings Brown, writing for the majority, defended "separate but equal" facilities on the grounds that "a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color--has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races."
    Justice Brown further stated, "The object of the [14 th ] Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either."
    The USSC decision in Plessy was not unanimous. Justice John Marshall Harlan, who ultimately wrote the correct opinion, was the lone dissenter. He did not see in the Constitution a justification to view citizens differently based on race. Justice Harlan wrote in his dissent,
    But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is, therefore, to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a State to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.
    With its ruling on the Plessy case, the USSC embarked on a slippery slope that would lead future courts and lawmaking bodies to view citizens as members of a particular race, requiring equal protection of the laws because of their race, instead of as individual citizens who are guaranteed equal protection of the laws because of the Fourteenth Amendment's mandate.
    The "separate but equal" doctrine stood until 1954, when the USSC struck down, in the Brown v. Board of Education case, "separate but equal" facilities. In the Brown opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren stated that,
    . . . to separate (school children) solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. . . . Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the