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Former Sen. Edward W. Brooke
Credit: HistoryMakers.com
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Powell and Rice cannot Overshadow Bush’s Civil Rights Record
by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – The Bush Administration’s top Blacks – Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice – will cast long shadows over the Republican National Convention in New York this week – but not long enough to win Black votes, predicts the last Black Republican to serve in the United States Senate.
“I applaud Rice and Powell’s appointments and I think most African-Americans applaud them as well. But when you’re talking bread-and-butter issues, when you’re talking jobs and health care, you have to balance that. What are they doing for the millions of African-Americans who are suffering?” asks former Massachusetts Sen. Ed Brooke, the first Black elected to the U. S. Senate in the 20th Century. “From the tax programs, the war, and the disproportionate number of African-Americans going to war, when you look at it that way, they can’t expect to receive African-American votes just because of a few Black appointments.”
Brooke, who remains loyal to the Republican Party, says he will not attend the convention because he is not a delegate and is no longer involved in Massachusetts politics. He says his decision not to attend the convention is not a protest. Yet, his disappointment is evident.
“The Republican Party has not done what it should have done to attract African- Americans,” he says. “The party of Lincoln is not the party of Lincoln today. Unfortunately, African-Americans still view the Republican Party as opposed to the issues that are most important to African-Americans.”
Brooke, who served in the Senate from 1967 to 1979, comes from an era when progressive Republicans maintained a strong influence over the direction of the party, not just in obtaining Black appointments.
Until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” from 1933-1938, most Blacks were registered Republicans. As late as the early 1960s, it was not unusual for Republican candidates to get 30 percent of the Black vote, particularly moderate Republicans such as New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay and Connecticut Sen. Lowell Weicker.
A major turning point for the party and its relationship with African-Americans came when Republicans chose Sen. Barry Goldwater, an archconservative from Arizona, as its presidential candidate in 1964.
Goldwater ran on a states’ right platform, an overt attempt to court Southern segregationists. Only 6 percent of Blacks voted for Goldwater.
By contrast, 94 percent of African-Americans supported incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was elected in a landslide.
Since that time, Republicans have never received more than 15 percent of the Black vote. In 2000, George W. Bush received only 8 percent of the African-American vote, the weakest support a GOP nominee has received since Goldwater. The more the GOP has shifted to the right, the less support it receives from African-Americans.
“How sad it is that there no longer is that social justice wing of the Republican Party,” says Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way and former chief counsel to Brooke. “That wing of the party no longer exists.”
It’s getting steadily worse, he says.
“Even into the early 90s you could still get a third of the Republicans in the U. S. Senate and in the U. S. House of Representatives to support social justice issues, including civil rights,” says Neas. “But in 1994 [the year Republicans took over control of both the House and Senate and launched their ‘Contract with America’ campaign], that Republican Party that I used to be a part of ended, and the right wing of the party now controls it. I’m talking about the leadership of the House, the leadership of the United States Senate, the leadership of the White House. We now have the most Right-wing administration in modern times. This administration is doing everything possible to undermine - if not destroy - the Edward W. Brooks of the world, those Republican moderates and liberals who were such an important part of our history and civil rights history over the last 40 or 50 years.”
Neas says President Bush’s choice of judicial nominees is just one issue that leads some to view the Republican National Convention as a revival of “obstructionism”.
“Instead of seeking to nominate well-qualified, mainstream candidates who satisfy the important criteria for confirmation to the federal judiciary, the President, time and time again, has nominated individuals with extreme, right-wing legal views who pose a threat to the rights and freedoms that Americans hold dear,” Neas states.
Bruce Ransom, professor of political science at Clemson University in South Carolina, says the judicial nominations are part of a larger problem.
“Primarily, there’s a notion that views Republican conservatism as akin to racism or anti-Black,” he observes.
Colin Powell, the nation’s first Black secretary of state, has been applauded by African-Americans for consistently supporting affirmative action.
Although Condoleezza Rice supports affirmative action but agreed with President Bush's decision to oppose two affirmative action programs at the University of Michigan, she is warmly received by Blacks and has been honored by the NAACP, the National Urban League and other Black groups.
While they may get may be personally popular, analysts say it will take far more than the popularity of Bush appointees to sway African-American voters.
It’s not just about skin color, says David Covin, professor of government and ethnic studies at California State University – Sacramento.
“Black people are extremely sensitive to how issues affect them collectively and Black people as a group tend to be more affected than White people as a group,” says Covin, president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. “The fact that Colin Powell and Condoleezza were selected doesn’t matter.”
If the Republican Party ever expects to attract Black voters in significant numbers, it must adopt different policies, according to political scientists.
“When you see President Bush arguing against affirmative action with the Supreme Court on Martin Luther King’s birthday, symbolically, that sends a message to African-Americans about their outreach to the Black community,” says Desiree Pedescleaux, associate professor of political science at Spelman College in Atlanta. “It will take careful planning. It will take years of work.”
Covin agrees.
“It takes a track record. They had a great track record with Black voters up to the 1932 election. They were not only the party of Lincoln but of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.”
Politics is more than about winning an election, explains Neas.
“It would certainly be good for the country if they would be more inclusive and there are always going to be areas where you do want a variety of views,” he says. “This is what this election is all about, which way we’re going to go as a country.”
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