ST. LOUIS -- Quick quiz: What do LL Cool J, The Rock, 50 Cent, Karl Malone, Don King, Lynn Swann, Wilt Chamberlain, Eldridge Cleaver, Peter Boulware, Tony Dungy and Alveda King, (niece of Martin Luther King Jr.) have in common? If you guessed membership in the Republican Party, please go to the head of the class.

If you are unable to comprehend how any African-American could make this political choice, please stay after school. You require remedial assistance. In fact, your intolerance is part of the problem, for both the Republican and Democratic Party and the country at large.

For starters, it is this group of racial antagonists that regularly demonize prominent African-American Republicans. Republicans are regularly accused of bringing out "certain" African Americans such as Colin Powell and J.C. Watts because it is believed that they have no program, no policy. The addage is "they'd rather take pictures with black children than feed them." Clarence Thomas has even been referred to as "a handkerchief-head, chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom." by such celebrities as Director Spike Lee.

So many prominent African American are able to offer such indictments with general immunity from their brothers and sisters on the left. Such statements carrying so little consequence is not a healthy state of affairs. But it does offer interesting insight into the mindset of the modern progressive.

Not so long ago, the right was regularly charged with racial insensitivity, and far worse. The indictment was not groundless. Circa-1970s issues such as busing, affirmative action and set-asides lent themselves to serious racial tension. In fact, many Republicans believe these debates and the Nixonian "Southern strategy" remain the primary reasons for overwhelming African-American support on behalf of Democratic candidates today.

This race-conscious era had another negative political impact for the GOP: It helped erase the memory of strident Southern Democratic opposition to the civil rights initiatives of the 1960s. I was reminded of all this tortured history while reading about the death threats directed toward African Americans who has come out for Mitt Romney in a very public way.

These death threats were limited to a very small group of unserious whack jobs, but it is mainstream progressives that criticize, and even degrade, successful African Americans. As recited earlier, we have seen this movie before. The pattern is familiar: A famous African-American supports a Republican, charges of "race-traitor" are made against the "offender," the press dutifully reports the ugly story, and the accusers escape unscathed.

In St. Louis County there is a race for County Executive. Republican Rick Stream is facing off against Democrat Steve Stenger, and the African American vote will play a huge factor, if for no other reason than the volitile atmosphere that have been created with the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson Missouri.

African American voters in North County are debating between supporting the democratic candidate, and keeping the status quo, even if that has proven to be little improvement for a culture and class of people. The people of North St. Louis County are truly seeking better employment, impoved housing, and better school systems which have not happened in the last decade.

Candidate Stream has a plan to change the status quo, but everyone knows, and especially anyone from St.Louis knows that change is a difficult thing. If African Americans would only get past the political boundaries of legislative government, they will find that Rick Stream is a preson who is sincerely focused on making a change --- a change that will benefit all of St. Louis County.

We have all witnessed the consequence-less vitriol directed at the likes of Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Colin Powell and a laundry list of other conservative African-Americans. God only knows what outright cruelty awaits me for writing this article, but that has to take a backseat to what is right.

I hope is that African American voters of St. Louis County will look past the political affiliations, and chose Rick Stream for St. Louis County Executive. Maybe then people who have been disenfrachised for so many years will have the opportunity to truly realize there own personal American dream through better opportunity.

Talk about breaking the glass ceiling!

Vote on November 4th

John Parker is a senior public relations and marketing professional, and President of Parker Public Relations in St. Louis, MO. He well experienced in crisis, situational, and executive communications, and public affairs with over 15 years of diverse experience in media relations, political operations and connecting individuals and corporations with the world through communications.


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