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Here at NewsOne, we are proud to announce that we have brought on another diverse voice in Vanessa Jean Louis – of the website – HipHopRepublican.Com.

Below is her first piece for our site.

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Two years ago I was scoffed at when I declined to participate in the historic election of our first “half-breed” (words borrowed from Democrat “Reverend” Jesse Jackson—so don’t shoot the messenger). Admittedly, I really struggled with my decision not to vote for Obama. I was told, “What are you going to tell your children and grandchildren?” I would usually respond, “I’m going to tell them I didn’t fall prey to the type of racial prejudice that Dr. King preached against.” You remember that ‘Dream’ he had, right-you know that whole thing about not making decisions based on someone’s race, but their character?

Moving right along, regardless of how any of us “feel” about the importance of Obama’s race—numbers don’t lie. So, for the sake of civility, I’ll put aside the unrelenting hatred I have for Obama (you know, since us Republicans disagree with his policies, we hate him), and those of you who support him NO MATTER WHAT should put aside the unyielding love and admiration–just for a few minutes. (Sidebar: I don’t actually hate Obama. There’s lots to celebrate about his life-I just threw that in there since that’s what some of you will accuse me of anyways…).

Keep reading…

When Barack Obama took office in January of 2009, Black unemployment was 12.6 percent. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since his coronation, I mean, inauguration, Black unemployment has consistently stayed around 16 percent. As it currently stands, our unemployment rate is 15.8 percent while white unemployment is 8.5 percent. So, not only has Black unemployment gone up over 30 percent since the election of ‘The Great One’, our rate is almost double that of Whites.

Now, if I had to take a wild guess about what some of you are thinking, it’s probably, “But what about Bush and the Republicans…?” Sure, there were many negative things we can point to about life under the Bush “regime”, however, Black unemployment averaged around 10 and 11 percent-even hitting a historic low of 9.4 percent in the fall of 2005. Incidentally, that’s an average that Bill Clinton, in all his infinite wisdom didn’t produce during his incumbency. In case you missed it, Bill Clinton told the late Ted Kennedy that Obama is better suited to provide White Democrats with coffee than he is to lead Americans. Look it up.

If we take it back to the 1980s, Jimmy Carter (the guy who referred to Obama as a ‘Black boy’) left Ronald Reagan with a near 20 percent black unemployment rate. By the time Reagan finished his second term, black unemployment was sliced in half to a low of around 11 percent. Reagan is frequently criticized for cutting“essential” social programs (which is a fallacy), but the facts clearly demonstrate that under Reagan more blacks were employed, and I prefer that my people be employed rather than be slaves of the state.

So, while most of Black America continue to fawn over Obama and refuse to acknowledge the elephant in the room (pardon the pun)–Americans, especially people who look like us– continue to suffer. As a conscious republican “sista” who lives and works in “da hood”, I’m gravely concerned about these numbers, and you should be too. I’m not saying Republicans are perfect, but when it comes to getting government out of the way to let private industry hire folks—they seem to be on the right side of issues (pun-intended).

I never really had much “hope” in Obama’s mantra that ‘Government intervention is the answer to all of our problems’–because I believe in individual initiative more than I do out-of-touch bureaucrats. Again, numbers don’t lie, so I’m still waiting to be proven wrong about all the ‘change’ I was told to believe in.

Vanessa Jean-Louis is an urban republican with conservative values. She holds a Master’s degree in Counseling from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her official blog is http://blog.afroconservative.com. She also writes for http://www.hiphoprepublican.com <http://www.hiphoprepublican.com/&gt; , as well as http://the-urban-counterculture.com <http://the-urban-counterculture.com/&gt; .  She is president of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of NJ and works fulltime as an inner city School Counselor. Vanessa has made appearences on Fox News as well as Our World with Black Enterprise hosted by Dr. Marc Lamont Hill. She can be reached at vanessa@afroconservative.com.