BLACK LEADERSHIP STILL NECESSARY

BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX

 

            George W. Bush got just 8 percent of the African American vote in November, the lowest level of support that any Republican received since 1964, when Barry Goldwater got 6 percent of the black vote.  Since he has promised to be President of "all the people", and his efforts aren't swaying the traditional black leadership, he has apparently embarked on an alternate course.  With his faith-based initiative, and his invitations of some of the conservative black clergy to the White House, most recently last week, Mr. Bush seems determined to circumvent the traditional black leadership by perhaps creating leaders of his own.

 

            He is aided and abetted by the conservative press, most notably the Wall Street Journal.  That paper has run a several articles castigating Rev. Jesse Jackson and asking if black leadership is necessary.  It is a curious question for the national newspaper to pose, one that might not even draw ink, except for the fact that the African American population is so solidly Democratic.  

 

            African American Republicans like to tell people that black Democrats have been "hoodwinked" or "brainwashed" into accepting the Democratic line, indicating their own contempt for their compatriots.  If more African Americans were Republican, would they be as inclined to think that party choice is a function of something other than free will?  The fact is that most African Americans vote Democratic because a Democratic agenda is presently more congruent with the advancement of African American people than a Republican agenda is.  For all his "compassionate conservatism" (and for the fact that Vice President Dick Cheney seems to have learned a lot about racial profiling since he ignored its existence in the debates), Mr. Bush has done little to move black folks from one party to another.  

 

            If black folks won't move toward Mr. Bush, he seems willing to move toward us, or some of us at least.  His poorly conceived faith-based initiatives have drawn ire from the left and from the right, but he sticks with it because it is one of the few ways he can get a dozen black folks in a room together for a necessary photo opportunity.  Few black ministers want to rob Peter to pay Paul by taking money away from effective government programs to fund faith-based initiatives.  Most understand the zero-sum-game Mr. Bush is playing.  They are interested enough to go along with the photo-op (few Americans will pass up invitations to the White House no matter who is President), but it remains to be seen whether they will shift their support to Mr. Bush because of a few pennies he has set aside for their collection plates.  

 

            Many of the ministers who have oped-in on faith=-based initiatives consider themselves leaders, so one wonders why the Wall Street Journal has such a problem with black leadership.  If the whole truth is told, they wouldn't ask questions about the necessity of black leadership if that leadership were more compatible with their free-market views.  But as long as Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton are talking about economic injustice and racial profiling, as long as former Congressman and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume is mobilizing millions of African Americans around civil rights issues, as long as Dr. Dorothy Height can get millions of black women to respond to her pleas through the National Council of Negro Women, the Wall Street Journal isn't going to be happy.  Instead, they've promoted the views of Washington D.C's Robert Woodson who has encouraged President Bush, according to the Journal, to "exploit" a supposed rift between black leadership and the black masses.  But what if there is no rift?  What if the people Mr. Bush is pandering to are receptive to his largesse, but remain outraged by the continuing injustice that African Americans experience?  What if they are as incensed as Sharpton is that the killers of Amadou Diallo got off without any punishment?  What if they looked at Cincinnati smoldering and felt sympathy for those who protested, not ire at their lawlessness?  If this is true, the only way that Mr. Bush can circumvent existing black leadership is to eliminate the conditions that make such leadership so necessary.  That might mean he'd have to back off on his zero tolerance rhetoric, and relax his position of eliminating federal financial aid for those convicted of drug offenses.  That might mean that Mr. Bush would have to keep a few dollars in the Labor Department, instead of slashing that job-training agency's budget by $600 million while the black unemployment rate exceeds 8 percent.  Those adjustments might put Mr. Bush at odds with his conservative constituencies, thus his reliance on the photo opportunity as a means of building support.  Bush's actions, and a spate of biased editorializing prove exactly why black leadership is still necessary.  As long as African Americans have a different experience than others, with higher unemployment rates, more poverty, more insecurity around public safety issues, and less wealth, African American leadership is needed.  When those gaps are closed, perhaps that need will abate.  But faith-based initiatives aren't closing the gaps, nor are Bush's attempts to create new leadership.