Hey Bobert! You may be right! I didn't just look at the Washington Post alone though (it's amazing what you can do with Photo Shop. I could make the demographic 50% black in short order), but that aside. If 11% to 13% of the pop. is black what is that of the about 500K folks who showed up for the GB rally? If it were a totally random sample that would be about 50K or so. That is plenty enough to show up in a random photo. But unfortunately that doesn't happen to be the demographic of the right-leaning side of the US political scene. So perhaps the photo did give a fair representation to fit the PROFILE you were using. That's right, you were profiling. You were examining that photo looking for one thing: skin color. It doesn't matter which skin color it was, it's still racial profiling. Did you look for the lighter skinned blacks or just the ones that would stand out more boldly in the sea of WHITE? Did you think to examine the stage where the speakers were? Had you, I know you would have seen some black folk there, Loretta Scott King for one. I mean, after all it was MLK day wasn't it? Did you count the white hoods or swastikas? How many?

So, why didn't you see any, or rather, many black folk there? I mean after all it was the Republican Party and it was the first Republican president that gave us the Emancipation Proclamation and engaged upon a war to re-unite the country under a banner of total equality and justice, not for just the black people but whites too!. You know, that war where hundreds of thousand of folks, many of whom were white, most of whom were white, died to free our black brothers in the South.

So what happened? Right up until the 1970's the South remained staunchly Democrat and though the North was turning Democrat, mainly through labor concerns, there was still a big shift in attitude toward the black folks. Could it have been through political manipulation that the Republican party was made bereft of their shining acheivement, the liberation of the black folks? you know, divide and conquer where you tell one group, like labor, that the other SMALLER group is holding them down, holding them back! And that you, their party of choice is doing everything they can to help them out of that fix. But gee! it's difficult, their enemies are SO powerful. It's gonna take a lot of money and the real issues are so complex that you, the average guy can't really understand them so it's gonna take a long time too.

An of course the folk who buy into this malarkey are the numbers they need to get them into office. And what they do, once they get there is material for another giant thread which I have no real desire to explore right now. Nonetheless they continually make a boogeyman out of the polical opposition and lay all their failures to come through on their promises.

As affluence continued to grow many of the Democrats' earlier recruits also gained in affluence and realized the lie that the Democrt Party is. They wanted to keep more of what they earned so they began to vote against higher taxation and even more to the point they did not like a party defining them as "down-trodden". Gee, the Democrats needed to strengthen their base with more victims. Who but the black folks! What a gold mine. Divide and conquer and this was especially ripe because there WAS racism! Never mind that it was being largely perpetrated by Southern Democrats. Numbers were what counted and they were and are masters at counting numbers! I mean just look at Florida in the Bush election!

Well the racism was a mixed bag as far as those who supported it, those who were against it and those who didn't have a clue. And thankfully, although the issue was greatly exploited, great steps have been made to end it. But as far as politics go the Repubs completely missed the boat and lost there one-time crown jewel of their party. Ever since then it has been the Deomocrat Party defining what it means to be a person of color! And if ever the black man wanted proof that it was those OTHER white guys doing it to them, well just look at who is racist! QED in my opinion!

But now it's our poor downtrodden brothers to the south of the South who need the Democrats' help. Never mind that they aren't even citeizens of this country! That doesn't matter. Just get here by any means possible and VOTE DEMOCRAT! We will save you. You are being exploited by America! Infact the whole world is being exploited by America! Thank God for Obama or we would have never known that! And just find out what he believes about Salvation! But that too is another thread.

Well, there WERE some black folks at that rally, honest! And some of them were speakers there also. And what they said was far more important than a headcount by skin color. Racism exists, that is true but it is NOT the sole provence of any one party or any one race. It is mean and petty-minded and OUGHT to be identified and driven out of our society. No one can argue that. But we need to stop making boogeymen out of the specter of racism and we need to realize that by doing so is itself a form of racism.

I'll stop here. I'm sure I have given my detractors tons of ammo with which to have a field day. Some may even be deserved. I'll continue to read this thread a while longer. But I could write a book. Just not here.

Just a footnote: Since the Repubs have started to wake up to HOW politics are played (you know, Chicageo-style) they have more and more come to resemble their enemy. Maybe that is what drives the Tea-baggers. Me? I'm still a minority of one.