With the deteriorating Washington, D.C., home of Frederick Douglass as a backdrop, GOP congressional leaders announced on May 8 legislation to provide almost $1 million of the $2 million sought to preserve the famed abolitionist’s historic residence — and launched a new campaign to expand the GOP’s base among African Americans. But Republicans may find it easier to restore the home of the 19th century champion of human rights and ally of Abraham Lincoln, than to bring back the support the GOP once enjoyed among blacks.
The Republican Party is still smarting from the Trent Lott debacle of last December when the then senate majority leader said that the country would have been better off if Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948. That year, Thurmond campaigned for the White House on a platform that called for preserving segregation. Since then, Republican leaders have been scrambling to find ways to deflect the perception that the GOP is an anti-civil rights party.
On the grounds of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said that Douglass, an early Republican, “fought for human rights. The values and principles that Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln worked so hard for in the 1800s are the same values and principles that we are fighting for as a Republican Party today.” To illustrate the GOP’s sincerity, Hastert unveiled the Fulfilling America’s Promise initiative, a collection of legislative measures designed to “empower African Americans to achieve the American Dream.” The plan has three components: creating jobs and economic security, providing equal opportunity for quality education, and strengthening faith and families.
Some political observers are skeptical about how relevant this initiative is to the core concerns of black Americans. “This is another Republican attempt to repackage GOP ideological positions,” says Robert C. Smith, a political science professor at San Francisco State University. Indeed, half the items comprising the initiative are part of the massive Bush tax-cut plan. The other measures include the issue of school vouchers for students.
However beneficial these measures might be, recent policy stances of President George W. Bush and congressional Republicans may operate to cancel them out. President Bush has done little to address the growth of joblessness and, as promised, has named judges to the federal bench who are as conservative as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In the face of strong support for affirmative action among a broad spectrum of black leaders, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush has opposed affirmative action admissions programs at the University of Michigan. The Republican-controlled Congress has failed to pass legislation that would raise the minimum wage, extend healthcare to the working poor, or provide full funding to education programs.
If the GOP is to attract a greater number of African Americans to its ranks, it will have to neutralize its dubious record regarding support for black interests. That would not have been such a tall order in decades past.
After the Civil War, newly freed blacks flocked to the GOP because it was the party of Abraham Lincoln, the “Great Emancipator.” Most black Americans belonged to the Republican Party until the 1930s when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt included them in his New Deal programs.
Things changed in 1964, however, when Democrat Lyndon Johnson received overwhelming black support at the polls, while black voters rejected the Republican standard-bearer, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act that year, but Goldwater fought to defeat the measure in Congress calling it a “states rights” matter.
Despite Goldwater’s failure to win the White House, demonstrating hostility toward the interests of African Americans has since paid off for other GOP politicians. President Ronald Reagan initiated massive funding cuts to time-tested social programs that benefited people of color, working families, and the poor. His judicial appointments are part of his lasting legacy: Only six of his 385 judicial appointees were black, and all three of his Supreme Court appointees are part of the block of five conservative justices whose rulings have reversed many of the hard-won civil rights and civil liberties gains from the 1960s. While he won election to the White House convincingly in 1980 and 1984, Reagan was opposed by 90% of black voters on both occasions. Each subsequent Republican presidential candidate has received similar rejection at the polls.
Although surveys conducted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies show that fewer African Americans identify with the Democratic Party, there is no evidence that they are embracing the GOP. In the Joint Center’s 2002 National Opinion Poll, 63% of African Americans considered themselves Democrats, 10% called themselves Republicans, and 24% described themselves as independents (see “A Shift From the Left,” Newspoints, May 2003). The Joint Center is a Washington, D.C.-based African American think tank.
Despite the much publicized loss of J.C. Watts as the only black congressional Republican, the GOP has made inroads among the black community. Republican Michael Steele was elected lieutenant governor, becoming the first African American to hold a statewide position in Maryland. In New York, State Secretary Randy Daniels, the highest-ranking black member of Republican Gov. George Pataki’s administration, reportedly created a campaign committee to raise money for a statewide race, perhaps for governor, should Pataki not seek a fourth term.
Black community activist Deloyd Parker of Houston says, “The Republican Party isn’t genuine in its claims to develop programs that will benefit black, Hispanic, and low-income people.” Parker’s list of issues he feels the GOP falls short on includes affirmative action, criminal justice, healthcare, civil liberties, and human rights. For the past 33 years, Parker has headed S.H.A.P.E. (Self-Help for African People through Education). At election time, the organization conducts a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote campaign that brings more than 5,000 people to the polls. Parker says he is not a party person and criticizes the Democratic Party for shifting too far to the right, but he doesn’t feel he can turn to the Republican Party as an alternative.
Bishop Mark Tolbert, pastor of Christ Temple Church in Kansas City, Missouri, is another black community-based leader who is unwilling to march under the GOP banner. But he does like some programs promoted by conservatives. His church will receive a three-year grant from the Department of Health and Human Services to educate thousands of young people on sexual abstinence. In May, he attended the Republican-sponsored African American
Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., but says, “When I got home, I saw the enactment of a program of tax breaks that benefit the rich. I could not get up in front of my congregation and say, ‘I’m a Republican and this is the way we should go as a community.'”Tolbert, who is president of the Coalition of Concerned Clergy of Kansas City, an organization that includes 300 pastors from 18 religious organizations, says, “These tax cuts will miss grassroots African Americans, the average wage earner, the two-income family” — families like most of the 1,700 members of Tolbert’s church. “When you’re elected president, you’re elected to serve all the people,” says Tolbert, who says he might feel differently if Bush’s policies were more balanced and less tilted toward the wealthy.
If the positions of Parker and Tolbert on the Republican Party are any indication, the chances of the GOP recruiting large numbers of African Americans into its ranks are not good. Large numbers may not be necessary. “If the GOP could just consistently get 20% or
more of the black vote, distributed among key states and congressional districts, it would stand a chance to be the majority party for the foreseeable future,” says Smith.
This might benefit black America generally because the two parties would work harder to gain black support. But Smith says the way for the GOP to achieve that 20% solution is to take greater steps toward addressing major African American concerns — something the party so far has shown little willingness to do.