Two Black US Senators May Be Elected from Vermont

There is not a single Black representative in the US Senate, and this is unlikely to change significantly because US Senators are elected state-wide and Blacks are not the voting majority in any US state.

If slightly in excess of four hundred and twenty thousand voting age Blacks moved across the border from New York into Vermont, from the relatively close cities of Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester and Poughkipsee, with reinforcements from the boroughs of New York, then these Blacks could become the voting majority of the state of Vermont. The successful organizers of this effort would be in line for campaigns to represent Vermont in the US Senate and House, as well as assuming the roles of Governor and the many other elected and appointed governmental roles in Vermont.

Is is worth it for 425,000 Blacks to move to Vermont in order to regularly elect two Black US Senators for the first time since Reconstruction. Given the tens of millions of dollars that whites and Blacks spend to win (and lose) US Senate seats, whites clearly believe that winning even one is very important. Is it less important for Blacks to win TWO seat?

In election campaigns, it is typical of candidates to ask supporters for many kind of support, from donating money to talking to their friends, to holding events. In the Black Vermont effort, the only thing that would asked of Blacks is that they move to Vermont and vote for the candidate who most represents our needs and aspirations as a group.

Naturally, I have heard a lot of reasons why the above might not work, but those reasons are unconvincing. It is true that the weather is cold in Vermont and Vermont receives a lot of snow, but so do cities like Chicago, Boston, and Detroit. How could cold weather dissuade a person living in Chicago or Albany from moving to Brattleboro?

Although many Blacks would prefer warmer weather, we left the South in the 1940's, in spite of the cold weather in the North, with political, economic and social mootives. If all of the Black in the US moved to Vermont from cities that are as cold or colder than Vermont, the Black would elect two Black US Senators without the need for raising millions of dollars and convincing whites to go along.

My brain was not created to travel the ruts that others travel unquestioningly. Working, as we have a few times, to elect Black US Senators from white majority states, works sometimes (about five times in the last hundred years), but Blacks must take over a state if we are to determine who will represent that state in the US Congress.

Whites already have this advantage because white candidates are virtually always elected from white majority states. The simple difference between their success and ours may be that Senate seats must be won at-large, by the entire voting majority of each states' (white) majorities. If US senators were elected in two districts of each state instead of electing both of them at-large, Blacks would have a better change of winning US Senate elections in a number of states.

However, that would require whites to willingly give up US Senate seats to Blacks. That is only slightly less likely than restitution to Black's wages and interest from the days of American slavery. If a revolutionary solution that takes power from whites also depends upon the support of whites, as would two-district US Senate elections in the several states, then Blacks will wait and until every one of our dead Black skeletons are black with the dirt of the ages.

Whites need not change states to be from among the voting majority. That's why they have not made any effort to be the white majority of a state, although they make very intense efforts to create districts in which whites will win city council, school committe and Congressional seats. We cannot copy whites' path into the US Senate because we do not have the demographic advantage with which whites start in every US Senate election.

The only solution is to band together and CREATE the demographic advantage that whites have always taken for granted.

When I told Blacks and whites that 2008 must mark the end of the white male monopoly of the US Senate, many Blacks seemed disinterested, while others thought it could not come to pass. Some Blacks were willing to their hopes in laughable and risible John Edwards rather than bet on the end of the white male monopoly of the presidency.

Just as Blacks realized that a Black man could be president, Blacks will eventually realize that Vermont can send two Black US Senators to Washington. Our imaginations and conceptualizations may not yet have realized the opportunity, but Blacks aren't stupid and whites cannot hide the Easter Eggs from us through Election Day.


Of course many whites would snort angrily and inveigh against the new version of Black nationalism, but Vermont is not a nation. It is a state in a federal system of government whose Constitution gives Blacks the right to travel, including to Vermont. Let the white snorters stand at the borders of Vermont, trying to intimidate Blacks who are moving to create political power just as white parents move from town to town in order to put their kids is the best school districts.


There is nothing illegal about moving to Vermont in order to vote there, and the plan does not require any approvals from a majority-white US Congress or from the majority white and ultra-conservative US Supreme Court. No, this is a plan that we Black can implement on our own. That causes whites who voted for John McCain shiver in their boots. The more white talking heads and politicians inveigh against Blacks move to take over New Hampshire, the more they will publicize the concept and convince Blacks that it must be good for us if Fox News is so unalterably against the idea.