Do white conservatives care about black people?

By John Eidson

My wife and I have friends who are not hurting financially, but by no means are they in the same league as Bill Clinton. They live in a 2,000 square foot house, drive inexpensive cars, wear inexpensive clothes and eat at inexpensive restaurants. They also are white southern Baptists and conservative Republicans. From the way such people are portrayed by some politicians and journalists, you might think they are hostile toward the well-being of blacks. If you might think that, you would be wrong.

Coast for Christ Baptist Ministries is a non-profit organization that helps residents of fishing communities along a 200 mile stretch of coastline in Ghana, West Africa. With few jobs, widespread disease and rampant poverty, most of the people who live there struggle mightily just to get from one day to the next.

In addition to substantial charitable giving to their church, our friends personally bought a $10,000 fishing boat for a coastal village in Ghana, and paid to send a young black woman to medical school. And that is not all they have done in reaching literally across the ocean to help those in need who happen to be people of color.

You might be asking yourself why they don’t help blacks in this country. The answer is they do, because their charity towards black people is not limited to those in faraway lands. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, they and other members of their predominately white and overwhelmingly Republican church traveled at their own expense to the Gulf Coast, where they stayed for three weeks helping storm victims without regard to skin color.

Our friends are not alone. Despite claims to the contrary, particularly at election time, most conservative Republicans have nothing but good will for their fellow citizens whose ancestors were brought here as slaves. Are there some who don’t? Unfortunately, yes. But the same is true of some Democrats, as was proven during the primary season where many Democrats voted against Barack Obama simply because he is black.

So, if white conservatives actually do care about black people, why do so many of them vote for Republicans? The answer is they believe in conservative alternatives to the failed welfare programs that are largely responsible for the tragic conditions in much of urban America. Bill Cosby put it best when he observed that “welfare kills the human spirit”

When blacks are ready to look for new solutions, they will find that white conservatives are eager to help.

John Eidson is a white conservative who takes great pleasure in black success.