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Why Condi Rice and Colin
Powell Can't Help Bush Win With Blacks
By Molefi Kete Asante
(First Published in City Press, August, 2004)
Of the two main political parties
in the United States, the Democratic Party is the most progressive
and generally the most liberal. The Republican Party remains the
bastion of conservative and right wing politics.
There has been a metamorphosis
of the American political landscape since the days of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s presidency. He was the first Democratic president
to win the hearts of the black population. Prior to Roosevelt, blacks
tended to vote, when they could, for the Republican Party because
it was seen as the party of Abraham Lincoln. Since Roosevelt’s
“New Deal” the African American population has become
more solidly Democratic.
There is no indication that the
upcoming American election will change that fact. George Bush, even
with several African Americans in his cabinet, will not be able
to change the perception in the mind of African Americans that the
Republican Party does not like black people, poor people, women,
African nations, progressive groups, environmental groups, workers,
or those fighting for their freedom and liberty.
It is an ironic thing that with
two of the most powerful blacks ever in an American government the
African American people are disgusted with the Republicans. Both
have responsibilities for foreign policy and yet neither Colin Powell
nor Condelezza Rice has been distinguished in African policy. You
do not hear their voices on Congo-Rwanda, Darfur, Cote D’Ivoire,
Liberia, and so forth, and if you hear their voices on anything
affecting oppressed people it is cast in the normal threats of the
right wing. Powell, I must confess, has been a little more forthcoming
than Rice on some of the issues. They tell me that there is a softer
side to him. If that is true, then the Republicans better use it
because the black voter is fired up to go all out against Bush.
The only thing that the Republicans
can do that might change the social and political landscape of blacks
voting for the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, is to announce
that Colin Powell would be the Vice Presidential candidate for the
Republicans. If that happened, blacks would split their vote because
there are enough blacks who want to believe Colin Powell has a different
agenda than Bush and Condelezza Rice that they would go for him.
I am not one of those blacks. I believe that Powell is as much a
part of the war-faring club that occupies the American government
as any of the others in Bush’s cabinet. It is true that Powell
is not Condelezza Rice, either in spirit nor in soul. He, at least,
recognizes and accepts with delight his African origin and heritage.
But neither Rice nor Powell will figure in Bush’s election
debacle with the African American public.
The evidence is in and the conclusions
reached. This American election will be one of the most partisan
in history and the black people of the country are leading the charge.
The African American people vote
80% to 90% for the Democratic Party in every election. Thus, the
defining ethnic characteristic of the American Democratic Party
is its strong African American base. No other ethnic community in
the United States is as liberal and progressive as the African American
community. It is the rock solid base from which all Democratic Party
politics must flow.
African Americans are more solidly
liberal than the next ethnic-religious community, the Jewish community.
Where the Jews give a majority of their votes to the Democratic
Party they are more likely to vote Republican than African Americans.
In fact, the Jewish vote hovers around 55% to 65% Democratic. The
Latino vote, meaning those who speak Spanish, tends to be pro-Democratic
by a slight margin largely held back by a strong conservative vote
pattern of the anti-Castro Cubans who settled mostly in Florida.
Election time 2004 will pit John
Kerry, a Democrat, against George Bush, the incumbent president,
a Republican. In the past four presidential elections more whites
have voted Republican than Democratic. Whenever Democrats have been
elected president, as in the case of Carter and Clinton, it has
been the black population that has voted overwhelmingly Democratic
to give the Democratic candidate the election. This is one reason
the debacle in Florida during the last presidential election in
2000 still retains so much emotion for the African American community.
There is a sense that African Americans
were robbed in Florida. Many thousands of blacks were disenfranchised
in Florida because the Supreme Court refused to allow all of the
votes to be counted. It was a moment of crisis in a democratic system
and the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, with magnanimity did not
pressure the situation as many had hoped.
Nevertheless, in the Florida situation, African Americans were the
people most affected by the crisis. The NAACP, the largest civil
rights organization, said that black voters were harassed, directed
to polling places outside of their communities, and prevented from
voting when they showed up at the polling places.
It seemed that the Florida election
administrators were not about to allow black voters to decide the
election in 2004. Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida, is George Bush’s
brother and the word on the street, that is, among the common people,
was that Jeb Bush was not about to allow his brother to lose the
election in his state. There is no way to know what Jeb Bush did
or did not do, but one thing is for certain, George Bush is campaigning
in Florida like it is the one state he must win in 2004. I can guarantee
my readers that the black voters of Florida, like black voters throughout
the United States, will come out to vote in record numbers during
this election season.
I cannot think of a presidential
campaign in the United States that has brought out as many partisans
as this one. African Americans are fed up. We have joined this election
year sooner and with more determination to unseat the incumbent
than ever in history. I believe there are several reasons for this
attitude on the part of the African American population. In the
first place, people believe that the Republicans, and especially
the last three Republican administrations, Ronald Reagan, George
Bush, and now George W. Bush, have played political games with the
African American people. They have not taken our liberation struggle
for the past three hundred years seriously. When there was an opportunity
to appoint a person to the Supreme Court who stood for Civil Rights
and Justice, the former President Bush gave us Clarence Thomas,
an intellectual weakling and a man who has voted against African
American, African, and women in at least twenty court cases. Thomas
is more conservative and reactionary than the whites on the Supreme
Court.
I bring Clarence Thomas up because
Condelezza Rice is much like Clarence Thomas. Both grew up with
negative attitudes about Africa, African Americans, and themselves.
They were often isolated in white schools, brought up in home that
had little appreciation of the long, noble heritage of Africa in
America, and they were whispered to by whites that they were not
like the rest of us.
The masses of black voters say
of Condelezza Rice, “Thanks to the ancestors, she is not like
the rest of us!” George Bush’s favorite black is part
of his problem with the black community. You cannot convince black
America that the Republicans are serious about us when all they
can do is to find “Negroes,” and I am using that term
in the negative way the youth on the street use it, who will say
anything to please white people or to serve their interests.
People are also pumped up to vote
against Bush in the black community because they believe that he
has demagogued the issue of religion, like he is more religious
than John Kerry, because he prays to a Protestant God. Religion
has never stopped people from deciding to harm other people. The
thousands of people who were the victims of the show of force called
“Shock and Awe” in Baghdad could have attested to the
fact that Bush’s religion did not keep him from dropping hundreds
of bombs on innocent people.
In a couple of months the American
nation will elect a president and the results of the election will
be extremely important for African Americans. To be sure, the election
will be closely followed by people around the world. I expect the
Republicans will energize their base by appealing to the fears of
the upper middle classes that they will have to pay more taxes because
the Democrats will want to do things for people like provide health
care and social welfare.
Yet a lot of optimism exists because
of John Kerry and his vice presidential candidate John Edwards,
but the African American population has been looking for more creative,
bold, and challenging statements from Kerry. We want to see him
speak more on issues affecting Africa, liberation of the oppressed,
and economic relations between Africa and the United States. He
has come around to a degree since the Democratic National Convention
but he will need to do even more to demonstrate that he understands
that the strength of his core voters is what will get him elected.
Soon the only ritual left in the
American nation’s season of politics will be the election
itself. The campaign speeches, the conventions, and the television
advertising campaigns will be over and the voters will go into the
polling places to cast their votes. I can guarantee you that the
turnout at the polls will be quite high this year because the electorate
has already taken sides, and black Americans have already sided
with the Democrats.
Molefi Kete Asante is one of
the most published contemporary scholars, having written more than
sixty books and three hundred articles.
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