A Hard Hitting Look at Bush's Court of Black America

From Chapter 6:
A Hard Hitting Look at Bush's Court of Black America

In July 2004, President Bush thundered to the throng of delegates at the National Urban League’s annual convention in Detroit, “What have the Democrats done for you.” It was bold, audacious and touched a raw nerve. The mostly black, and overwhelmingly Democratic, crowd erupted in spontaneous applause. The question was not a question but a challenge to black America.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Top Democrats and civil rights leaders sneered at Bush’s political dig. At first glance their sneers seemed justified. There’s never been a Republican in the Congressional Black Caucus. Black Republican congressman refused to join. Nearly all black elected state and local officials are Democrats. The top civil rights leaders have always been Democrats.

That seemed to be changing. Bush bumped up his black support in 2004 by several percentage points nationally over 2000. That increase helped put him over the top in the battleground state of Ohio. Bush and the GOP leaders believed that bigger and better things lay ahead. They had good reason to think that. During the past century, the GOP has had a tortured, conflicted, and contradictory, but deep and profound relationship with black America. In that century, the GOP pandered to white racists, but proclaimed itself the party of Lincoln, liberty, justice and civil rights. GOP presidents played the race card, and used quotas to make black appointments, but denounced quotas and championed a color-blind society. GOP presidents used racial code-speak, but railed against racism.

The GOP on the big ticket public policy issues opposed Great Society programs, welfare, and government entitlements, but backed anti-lynching and civil rights laws, expanded government programs, welfare, and entitlement programs.

The dangling question in 2006 as it will be in the 2008 presidential election is can the GOP overcome its legacy of racial contention and convince blacks that it offered more to black America than the Democratic Party. One thing is certain the historical love hate relationship between the GOP and blacks presents profound possibilities and even more profound dilemmas for the GOP.

 

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