Rene — End of the rainbow
Topic(s): US Analysis | Comments Off on Rene — End of the rainbowEnd of the rainbow
In 2000 the Republicans paraded their diversity. But now the party is
showing its true colour – white
Gary Younge Monday September 6, 2004 The Guardian
General Colin Powell is missing in action. At the Republican convention in 2000 he led from the front, opening a line up that could have been set up by Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow coalition. Of the three co-chairs in 2000 one was black and another Hispanic; national security adviser Condoleezza Rice kicked off prime-time coverage one night while Chaka Khan serenaded George Bush. “Make no mistake about it,” said a Republican strategist at the time. “Bush is personally obsessed with diversity.” That obsession, even at this cosmetic level, seems to have long passed.
Powell, the secretary of state, was absent last week – not just from the
podium but from the entire convention. The White House says his absence was
a matter of “custom and tradition” that prevents the national security team
from attending. This must have been news to Bush’s father, who had secretary
of state James Baker at his side at the 1992 convention. Powell did not come
either because, given his misgivings on the war, the party did not want him
there or because, given his misgivings about the party, he did not want to
be there.
Either way, this year the most prominent black speaker was the education
secretary, Rod Paige – whose low public profile only a Google search could
save from oblivion. And it was downhill from there. After Paige came the
lieutenant governor of Maryland and finally Erika Harold, last year’s Miss
America.
The promotion of so many black faces four years ago was essentially
symbolic. Its aim was not to woo the African-American vote, but to soothe
the consciences of moderate whites who would not vote for a party that went
openly negative on race. The absence of prominent black figures on stage
this year was equally symbolic. For Bush’s reelection effort marks the
virtual completion of the racial realignment of the Republican party.
In the last presidential election Republicans received only 8% of the black
vote – the lowest percentage for 40 years. Recent polls indicate that this
year the figure will reach 4% – the lowest ever. Black Americans make up 12%
of the national population. Yet Republicans have no black congressmen and
fare only slightly better at a local level, where African-Americans comprise
0.4% of all Republican state legislators.
So the party of Lincoln, the president credited with freeing the slaves, is
now essentially the White People’s party – a race-based initiative that has
reestablished the segregation of American political culture. Ethnically they
are less exclusive. With around a third of the Hispanic vote (Hispanics may
be black or white) Republicans still have a toe-hold there, although they
are struggling to keep it.
But there are only so many people you can alienate at one time, and the
decline in black supporters was not an accident. This was the intended
consequence of Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy”. The party put race at
the centre of a project to radically reconfigure its base after the civil
rights era by appealing to racist white southerners who felt betrayed by the
Democrats. It worked, handing the south to the Republicans and forcing black
voters into the arms of the Democrats.
Now Bush is closing the deal. His policies and platform will ensure all but
the most negligible support from African-Americans, and transforming the
Republicans into a monoracial party in one of the world’s most multi-racial
nations.
To hear the gathering at the African-Americans for Bush rally at the Waldorf
Astoria last week you wouldn’t know it. They pointed to the sharp increase
in black delegates to the convention (the highest presence on record) as
proof that they are making strides. Showcasing polls indicating black
Americans are more likely to attend church regularly, oppose abortion and
gay marriage and support school vouchers than their white counterparts, they
claimed that the Republican party was more in tune with black values than
the Democrats could ever be.
Ask any of them why more than 90% of African-Americans will vote Democrat
and they claim that their friends and family members have simply been duped.
“Most African-Americans grow up in a family where their parents are
Democratic and it’s so easy to follow the group rather than think of what is
in their best interests,” says Don McLaurin, a black Republican from
Trotwood, Ohio.
Such statements are ironic since they echo precisely what many liberals say
about black Republicans – namely, that their inability to fathom their own
interests is the only rational explanation for their misguided political
choice. Both are wrong. People’s interests are not determined by their
melanin count but shaped by their experience. To suggest otherwise is both
obnoxious and patronising.
Moreover, it offers little help in understanding the Republican party’s
racial exclusivity. The rise in black convention delegates is a diversion.
It came from a pathetically low base (2.6% in 1996, 4.7% in 2000) and tells
us little. Shortly before South Africa’s first democratic elections 20% of
the delegates to the convention of the National party, the architect of
apartheid, were black. The fact that, both there and in the US, the rise
coincided with negligible black support at the polls simply suggests a
growing dislocation between black people in their chosen party and those
outside it.
It also suggests that African-Americans have the same narrow understanding
of “values” as the Republican party. They don’t. In particular, they seem to
value honesty and hard work sufficiently highly to frown upon on a president
who took them into a war based on lies, while marshalling an economy that
denies them jobs. Unemployment among black people remains double the
percentage for whites, while one in four African-Americans lives in poverty.
Meanwhile, polls show three-quarters of black Americans agree at least
somewhat with the proposition that Bush intentionally misled the country
into war. Finally, black Americans are understandably keen on racial
equality, a cause not best argued by the party which opposes affirmative
action and harbours the likes of the racist Mississippi senator Trent Lott,
who lamented the end of segregation less than two years ago.
In fact, black Republicans are right on only one count: the Democrats
certainly take the black vote for granted. The Democrats have only won one
election (in 1964) with a majority of white support since the second world
war. This time round African-Americans make up more than 10% of the vote in
a third of the crucial battleground states. “When the public is anxious or
angry, turnout tends to increase,” argues David Bositis of the joint centre
for political and economic studies in a recent report. African-Americans are
clearly angry with President Bush and want him out.” The question is not who
they will vote for but whether they will vote at all. Bush has given them
several reasons to loathe the Republicans; they are still waiting for Kerry
to give them some to love the Democrats.
g.younge@guardian.co.uk