A new book came out last month: The Grift: The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump. It jumped almost immediately to the top 10 list on Amazon, likely propelled by desperate leftists eager to hear why their hatred of Black conservatives doesn't make them racist.

The book is largely a fairy tale designed to allow progressives to sleep easier at night instead of worrying about the dramatic shift in political attitudes by Blacks towards leftism and their lack of support for Biden’s re-election.

It purports to provide a sharp rebuke for Blacks who are either self-identified conservatives or who call themselves Republican. It largely claims that the progressive policies pushed by self-appointed leaders like Al Sharpton and Stacey Abrams would give Blacks the boost the community desires if they were simply not undermined by skeptical Black voices.

Rather than make a positive case for these unpopular progressive policies — including those of the Biden administration — the main thesis appears to be that the skeptics are bribed or somehow on the take in exchange for “selling out.”

This dated trope while never true, has increasingly become stale because it is more useless now than ever. More and more Blacks see that the strategies being pushed by their so-called leaders simply don’t work and they are looking for alternatives.

Here’s the truth. Too many of those who claim to speak for Blacks merely parrot policy initiatives of woke progressives — who are overwhelmingly white. They not only don’t work — they are unpopular with Blacks. These ivory tower policies are a throwback to the pre-civil rights era.

The dramatic increase in the number of Blacks who identify as conservative is just the outworking of this reality.

There’s no good lesson to be learned from the second kick of a mule.

Blacks don’t seek yesterday’s solutions. We want to live the American Dream and take part in the prosperity that America offers — not turn the clock backward.

There once was a time when Americans of all stripes embraced policies involving greater government intervention in the free market and also with social policy. We didn’t know any better.

During the Great Depression Washington experimented with a host of regulations and dictates that took choices away from Americans broadly. During the Great Society era, Washington expanded on these approaches and included new so-called anti-poverty programs that would promote strong families, reduce hunger and homelessness as well as lower crime.

There’s now a consensus among political scientists that government interference during the Great Depression likely made things worse. In other words, economic growth was curtailed more and unemployment stayed higher longer.

Tragically, Blacks suffered most. Where unemployment among Black men prior to the Great Depression was lower than average, Black male unemployment is now the highest in America.

Increasingly, a similar realization is occurring about the ill effects of misinformed social policy.

Today, we are seeing that these social experiments have been an unmitigated failure. Out-of-wedlock births have exploded now, yet at the turn of the 20^th century they were rarer than among whites.

Crime, homelessness and ill-education have come at the cost of trillions expended by the American taxpayer, yet Blacks not only haven’t been helped, we’ve lost ground.

Public high schools graduate young men and women barely able to read their diplomas. And since Blacks attend public schools at higher rates than the population at large this failing hits us hardest.

Despite this, progressives argue that America must redouble its efforts to pursue many of the same approaches that failed in the 20^th century and many self-styled spokesmen carry their message.

Any voices that speak up about these dangers are the target of calumny. But it’s not working.

There’s a reason that there are more critics within the Black community today. In the 20^th century, no one really understood what the consequences might be of trying out these progressive ideas.

Today, those pushing these policies go against a headwind of knowledge and experience, and many Blacks are pushing back.

And tellingly, when individual Blacks speak up, they have a majority of Black American sentiment backing them up.

Consider inflation. Would-be Black leaders have consistently supported efforts by Washington to spend and spend. Despite warnings that unfettered spending would have disastrous effect, the NAACP and the Urban League supported Washington’s spending spree over the last three years.

The result: America has experienced an inflation tsunami over the last three years.

Blacks have been hardest hit.

As a group, Blacks have lost ground in terms of homeownership as interest rates have spiked. While the country is saddled with credit card debt as we try to maintain our lifestyle, the New York Federal Reserve reported a staggering level of credit card delinquencies — more than a 50% year-over-year increase.

For Blacks, the situation is quite bleak. A recent EBRI issue brief on the economic well-being of U.S. households found that the median debt-to-asset ratio is 50% higher among Black than white families. Blacks, like all households, need an inflation-free economy — not a woke one.

Also, look at affirmative action. It is taken as a fact by progressives that to be Black is to be for affirmative action. However, as a Gallup Center on Black Voices survey reveals, a majority of blacks support the Supreme Court’s ruling ending race-based affirmative action in college admissions.

Most blacks want MLK’s vision of equality, not the progressive pipe dreams of Ibram X. Kendi.

Views about law enforcement reveal another area where the Black rank and file differ from the progressive elites. While wokesters push for the “criminal is a victim approach,” Black America disagrees.

A supermajority of Blacks say that crime in their communities is their top priority. And a majority of Blacks (56%) express confidence in their local law enforcement, including 61% who say that law enforcement treats people like us fairly.

During the first year of the Biden administration, when progressives in the media told us that Blacks wanted to reduce funding for law enforcement, Pew reported that only 23% of Blacks supported defunding the police. That same poll revealed that a staggering 76% thought that funding should stay the same or increase.

Despite this lack of buy-in by Blacks, defunding police and related soft-on-crime approaches were pushed by progressives all over the country, and Blacks have been hardest hit. Unlike the BLM movement, Blacks are pro-police.

No wonder the latest Gallup survey shows that Blacks increasingly reject progressives and their standard bearer Joe Biden.

On issue after issue, the so-called spokesmen for Blacks are out of step with the views of Black America. It’s a fairy tale that the only reason Blacks would criticize these unpopular progressive policies is that they have sold out.