Randi Rhodes Forums

Editor's note: Fredrick D. Robinson, a Baptist preacher, is studying ministry in North Carolina. He's currently working on a book, "The 10 Commandments of Black Success!" He is the former editor of Atlanta Tribune: The Magazine and during the mid-'90s was on the editorial board of The Atlanta Journal, where he wrote editorials and a weekly column on local and national issues.

....But what excited me most was progressive black conservatism. Rooted in black nationalism and the self-help belief system of Malcolm X, it insisted that the black community be at the forefront of solving black problems.

Far from being separatist or pessimistic, it was highly hopeful about America, recognizing that there was much more opportunity than there were obstacles. It was policy- and solutions-oriented, focusing on things like rebuilding the black family, black entrepreneurship, starting and supporting black businesses in poor neighborhoods, enterprise zones, housing vouchers, micro-lending, repealing Davis Bacon (a prevailing wage law that unfairly prevented unskilled, often black, workers from gaining apprenticeships on federally funded construction jobs), and starting Christian schools.

It wasn't wholesale against social programs; it just wanted to duplicate the successes of those programs -- not necessarily government-led -- that actually worked. It didn't deny the existence of racism, but neither did it obsess over it, counting as more important those things over which blacks had control: persistence, hard work, academic exertion, and personal responsibility.

But progressive black conservatism would never gain traction. Its lone supporter among white Republicans -- HUD Secretary Jack Kemp under George H. W. Bush -- who pushed a strong urban agenda, was ignored as his party pursued an aggressive suburban strategy that further alienated blacks. The tone of black conservatism became even more accommodationist, with progressive voices being drowned out, and never evolved beyond parroting long-held white conservative and neoconservative dogma.