Wall St. Journal: Republicans in Black History

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Republicans in Black History

(from The Wall Street Journal, 12/20/00)

The party of Lincoln has a proud heritage.

BY EDWARD C. SMITH

Wednesday, December 20, 2000 12:01 a.m. EST

President-elect George W. Bush's history-making nomination of Gen. Colin Powell for secretary of state has not been enthusiastically embraced by members of the African-American leadership. Notably quiet have been the two reverends--Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton--who have elevated themselves to spiritual guardianship over all other blacks. Nor has the nomination of former Stanford University Provost Condoleezza Rice been as well-received as one would assume.

Mr. Bush has been accused of using Mr. Powell as a token for the purely political purpose of improving his image in the black community. This is absolutely absurd. Lest we forget, the secretary of state follows only the vice president and the speaker of the House in line of succession to the presidency. I can think of nothing less tokenistic than such an appointment.

A few years ago, when Mr. Powell was considering whether to seek a presidential nomination, a group of black college students was asked if they would vote for him if he did run for election. Unsurprisingly, a majority said they would. Yet I was surprised by the size of the minority who said they would not. One student was very specific: "Any black man who rises to the rank of general in the white man's army has to be an 'Uncle Tom.' "

Contrary to the student's remark, Mr. Powell, through a rare (and much tested) combination of talent and tenacity, is eminently qualified to hold the very high office for which he has been nominated.

As the nation now knows, Mr. Bush was rejected by the black community by a margin of 9 to 1. Many find such a statistic impossible to fathom, but it can be easily explained. Since the 1960s, the Democratic Party has become home to the vast majority of African-Americans. This is the party, after all, that advocates federal intervention in nearly all walks of life, promising that such intrusion is a true sign of progressivism. It is the champion of affirmative action and other compensatory initiatives designed to reverse the racial wrongs of the recent and distant past. Over the past 20 years many blacks began to see themselves--regardless of educational attainment and economic status--as America's eternal victims. Victimhood even acquired a peculiar kind of cachet. It became a form of honor to proclaim victim status; many who did so were rewarded with patronizing federal programs that either intentionally, or in some cases inadvertently, created an African-American culture of dependency. As victims, blacks were emancipated from the rigorous responsibility for controlling their character and conduct. Empathy and excuses for deviant and dysfunctional behavior became an additional entitlement.

It is clear, for those who wish to see, that during the past two decades many (though hardly all) Democrats have preyed upon this social inversion, to the party's profit. They have translated black victimhood into a message: "We are your voice and your savior. Stay with us and salvation will come." Sadly, most blacks have become believers in this gospel, making it difficult for them to accept Mr. Powell and Ms. Rice as legitimate achievers.

What is often forgotten in this partisan controversy is that the great American social revolution began in 1953 with a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike nominated fellow Republican and former governor of California, Earl Warren, to the position of chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Warren was able to engineer a 9-0 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, ending school segregation. This was quite a feat considering that one of the nine, Hugo Black, was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. The following year, in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., which immediately led to her arrest and a city-wide bus boycott. The boycott ultimately acquired the leadership of the brilliant and fearless Martin Luther King Jr. Two years later, Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock, Ark., to forcefully integrate Central High School. Bill Clinton often and proudly remarks that this last event marked a major turning point in his life, especially his commitment to racial justice.

We also have, this year, the 135th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Although it was fought between the North and the South, it was also fought between Republicans and Democrats. Thankfully, the Republicans won. For blacks, who contributed mightily to the defeat of the Confederacy, the fruits of victory were the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau, the founding of Howard University and other schools of higher education, and the addition of three new amendments to the Constitution: the 13th, in 1865, abolishing slavery; the 14th, in 1868, granting citizenship to blacks; and the 15th, in 1870, awarding black males the right to vote.

All of these momentous and unprecedented social changes were presided over by Republican presidents. The next Democrat to reach the White House was Grover Cleveland, and that did not happen until 20 years after the Civil War ended.

Mr. Bush has a formidable opportunity to reach out to blacks through high-level appointments to his administration and innumerable other ways. I am confident that he is preparing to compete strongly with Democrats for African-American support.

Mr. Smith is the director of American studies at American University.



-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), December 20, 2000

Answers

Just as there is no black racism, neither is there a (real) black Republican.

-- (AlSharpton@the.fundraiser), December 20, 2000.

>> [...] the great American social revolution began in 1953 with a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike nominated fellow Republican and former governor of California, Earl Warren, to the position of chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Warren was able to engineer a 9-0 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, ending school segregation. <<

Point number one: Ike had no inkling that Earl Warren would become the kind of jurist he became. Ike viewed Warren as a 'safe' and conservative judge. He was quite shocked at some of Warren's rulings. So, giving Ike credit for Warren's opinions is disingenuous. Warren deserves the credit - not Ike.

Point number two: Brown vs. The Board of Education was argued brilliantly by Thurgood Marshall. Giving Warren all the credit for the result is also disingenuous. The arguments that the Supreme Court endorsed were made by a black man and a Democrat.

Point number three: In 1954 (? if memory serves), when the 9-0 decision was made, the vast majority of justices were appointed by Democratic presidents. Placing all the credit for Brown vs. Board of Education at the feet of the Republicans is a serious revision of history and a very misleading presentation of the truth.

Sure, give Earl Warren credit for his leadershiop and his vote, but the Republican party deserves only a tiny fraction of the overall credit, if any.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 20, 2000.


Brian:

You have a strong enough case without looking silly, but consider your points numbers one and three. Point one gives credit to the *Justice* if a Republican nominated him and you like what he did. Point three turns around and gives credit to the nominating Democratic *Presidents* if you like what the justices did. Doesn't this smack just a bit of heads I win, tails you lose?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 20, 2000.


>> Point one gives credit to the *Justice* if a Republican nominated him and you like what he did. Point three turns around and gives credit to the nominating Democratic *Presidents* if you like what the justices did. <<

No.

Firstly, I made reference to the democratic Presidents who nominated the majority of the other justices, not to give them credit for what their nominees did, but simply to indicate what I am sure is true, although I cannot state it as a fact solely from memory - that the other justices, aside from Warren, were themselves overwhelmingly Democrats.

Secondly, I witheld a certain amount of credit from Ike for the reason I stated - that Ike had no intention of nominating a justice whose record would come to resemble Earl Warren's. Had Ike known what Warren's legacy would be, I am utterly certain he would never have nominated Warren. Under that circumstance, is it just to credit Ike for what was a wholly unintended consequence?

If it makes such a difference to you, I will stipulate that I give no credit to any of the Presidents who made the nominations for any particular vote that their nominees eventually made.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 20, 2000.


Brian:

Fair enough. But your unrelenting focus on how awful the republicans are does you no credit. The WSJ is indeed slanted, and their attempts to give republicans credit for Brown is absurd. Nonetheless, if I were to describe you the way you characterize republicans, I'd describe your appearance by mentioning only your warts, and your character by mentioning only your mistakes. I'm not defending Smith here, so much as noticing that you are unseemly determined to deny ANY credit when only a little is due.

Both parties have done both great and stupid things.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 20, 2000.



>> ...your unrelenting focus on how awful the republicans are does you no credit. <<

What the...? The article posted here by eve made claims for Republicans that were misleading and went beyond what was justified by historic facts, by selecting among those facts in a way that distorted the full picture. Specifically, the author claimed:

"...the great American social revolution began in 1953 with a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower."

A less partisan historian would have credited Truman with the executive order desegregating the Army as more significant in all ways for desegregation than Eisenhower nominating Warren to the Supreme Court.

But, putting the Warren nomination into a more balanced perspective by pointing out that the Brown vs. Board of Education decision involved a lot of Democrats can hardly be characterized (in my opinion) as an "unrelenting focus on how awful the republicans are."

You aren't just reaching, Flint, you're dislocating your arm.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 21, 2000.


Brian:

We're not communicating. I wrote "The WSJ is indeed slanted, and their attempts to give republicans credit for Brown is absurd." Did you see that?

I am agreeing with you that the view of history presented in this WSJ article is distorted beyond recognition. You are correct to point this out. You have made an at least plausible argument against the politically conservative viewpoint with each of your posts. This is ALL you do. It starts out sounding reasonable, but over the course of time, with one criticism after another, it becomes unrelenting, and implies that you work hard to live in as one-dimensional a political world as you can.

Yes, if I chose to do so, I could comb through any complex and multifaceted view of life, extracting carefully selected bits and pieces and pretending I'm presenting a balanced perspective. Remember last year, when I kept complaining that the doomer perspective was founded solidly on carefully selected information carefully interpreted to fit a preconception? I haven't suddenly lost my sensitivity to this tendency. To me, you sound like you are saying "Citibank really IS spending 600 million on remediation. How can you deny this?" I don't deny it, you are quite correct about the details. But the big picture that results from such a focus is ill served.

So I keep expecting you to consider everything on the merits, and be willing to let the data determine your opinion rather than vice versa. And you're letting me down. Important issues are no better served by sniping than by misrepresenting.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 21, 2000.


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