On a recent Fox News interview, Black Republican Allen West to guest host Laura Ingraham that his work a congressman in the Tea Party was helping African American voters escape the “21st-century plantation” that was being overseen by black liberals like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).
“When you look at what is happening, the laughable hypocrisy is that [President Barack Obama’s] big black bus is not going into the black community,” West told Fox News guest host Laura Ingraham according to Crooks and Liars.
“You have this 21st-century plantation that has been out there, where the Democrat Party has forever taken the black vote for granted,” West continued. “And you have established certain black leaders, who are nothing more than the overseers of that plantation. And now the people on that plantation are upset, because they have been disregarded, disrespected, and their concerns are not cared about.”
“So I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman, to kind of lead people on the Underground Railroad, away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility.”
For clarity of his statement, Ingraham inquired, “Now, you’re saying Maxine Waters is the plantation boss at this point?”
“Well, absolutely,” West agreed. “Because what you end up having — and you know, I’m gonna be brutally honest — is that white liberals have turned over to certain leaders, quote-unquote ‘perceivably (sic) innocent’ in the black community like, a Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or a Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee, and said you know, pacify and keep the black community firmly behind us, regardless of the failures of our social welfare policies.”
“That’s the absence of this quote-unquote ‘leadership’ in the black community, which as I say are nothing more than overseers of this 21st-century plantation,” he added.
West was swept into office during the historic November 2010 elections that saw over 80 Tea Party freshman enter the U.S. Congress. In a recent op-ed article in the New York Times, Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, and David E. Campbell, a political scientist at Notre Dame, stated they have collected data indicating that the Tea Party is “less popular than much maligned groups like ‘atheists’ and ‘Muslims.'”
Most recently, West was in the news for an explosive e-mail sent to fellow Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), copied and blind copied to other members of the House. West took issue with the congresswoman’s floor debate that questioned his support of Medicare cuts during this summer’s debt ceiling battle. West’s district is heavy with senior citizen voters. In his e-mail he stated that he was tired of her questioning him and that she was no “lady” and he would no longer treat her as such. He also referred to her as “vile” and “despicable”. Known for her intelligence and fund raising capabilities, the eight-term congresswoman was recently named chairwoman for the Democratic National Committee.
