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Tuesday, Sep 07, 2004

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The Republicans' true colour

By Gary Younge

In 2000, the Republicans paraded their diversity. But now the party is showing its true colour -- white.

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 W. 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.

Gen. Powell, the United States' Secretary of State, was absent last week — not just from the podium but from the entire convention. Gen. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Bush's re-election effort marks the virtual completion of the racial realignment of the Party.

In the last presidential election, Republicans received only 8 per cent of the black vote — the lowest percentage for 40 years. Recent polls indicate that this year the figure will reach 4 per cent — the lowest ever. Black Americans make up 12 per cent 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 per cent 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 re-established 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 toehold 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 Mr. 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 mono-racial 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.

The rise in black convention delegates is a diversion. It came from a pathetically low base (2.6 per cent in 1996, 4.7 per cent in 2000) and tells us little. Shortly before South Africa's first democratic elections 20 per cent of the delegates to the convention of the National party, the architect of apartheid, were black. The fact that, both there and in the U.S., 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.

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 per cent of the vote in a third of the crucial battleground States. The question is not who they will vote for but whether they will vote at all. Mr. Bush has given them several reasons to loathe the Republicans; they are still waiting for Kerry to give them some to love the Democrats. —

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