An Open Letter to Black Americans From This White Former Republican Religious Right Enemy: When it Comes to the Nomination of a New Supreme Court Justice, President Obama is Being Disrespected Because He’s Black. Period!

I am a white privileged well off sixty-three-year-old former Republican religious right wing activist who changed his mind about religion and politics long ago.  In view of what the Republicans have become in 2016 and how they have disrespected President Obama for 7 years, I’m glad I fled that party. The New York Times noted that because I left the right wing my former friends call me a traitor. These days in view of the naked racism of the Republicans I’m proud to be called that.

When a black woman or man shouts “racism” some white Americans pretend that we are past race issues and that a black person accusing whites of being racists is just looking for excuses. So please let this white man in the age demographic usually associated with right wing Republicans say it too: The Republicans’ disrespect of President Obama is now and has always been about race!

The Republicans in the Senate and their treatment of the President over his right to nominate a judge to the Supreme Court, reminds me of  the 18th century “law” that counted a black man as the equivalent to “three-fifths of a person.”

Now Obama is being given three fifths of his rights as a president.

Today my former Republican friends have a front-runner Donald Trump who has disrespected the President and all people of color. Trump has even disrespected Mexicans and other immigrants as “rapists.”

Trump has called  the brown people seeking refuge in our country “rapists.” Does that ring a bell? What was the “reason” so many innocent black men were lynched? They too were called rapists.

Now the Republicans are denying his legitimacy again.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said he will “absolutely” block anyone President Obama names to the Supreme Court, no matter who the nominee is.

Cruz said the white-controlled Senate does “not remotely” have an obligation to at least consider a nominee. “You know what?” Cruz said, “the Senate is advising right now. We’re advising that a lame-duck President in an election year is not going to be able to tip the balance of the Supreme Court,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The time has come for the black community to rise up and punish the Republicans in 2016 in a way that will send them back to the stone age where people with racist views belong.

The Republicans have been disrespecting President Obama since Day One. 

 It is all about the color of his skin, that’s all, the color of his skin. And any white man or woman who says otherwise is lying. Period.

America doesn’t want to admit this truth for the same reason as people deny the truth when they are told they have terminal cancer. Racism is the American cancer.

Yet the truth is clear: When Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said after Scalia’s death that the next  president, rather than President Obama, should select a successor, the senator’s coded racist words were clear to anyone except whites living in denial.

Black America knows better. After years of watching white Republicans “question” the president’s birthplace and his faith, and hearing a member of Congress shout “You lie!”African-Americans have to say “ENOUGH!” in 2016 and VOTE to send every Republican senator, Congressperson, governor and presidential candidate out into a long cold night of oblivion that awaits racists everywhere.

Senate Republicans are launching an attempt to deny the legitimacy of our country’s first black president–again. Our president, is the president of the United States, and he has been disrespected at every turn.

Black American’s justified anger must become action during this election.

Americans who love our country have to send this message: We black, white and brown people who love America won’t tolerate the next round of Republican disrespect of our first black president. We won’t let these bigots to spoil his legacy.

We will defend the Obama legacy by sending a Democrat to the White House. And we will send Democrats to Congress too so that they may confirm justices who will defend civil rights.

We have a lot to do to heal this country of the damage done by the white Obama-haters. Send this message to the Republicans by VOTING: “Get rid of your racist haters or go the way of the dinosaurs in 2016!”

Frank Schaeffer is a writer. His latest book —WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace