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Blackest Night

Jacob Weisberg
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2000, at 12:09 AM ET

PHILADELPHIA--The Republicans may be taking this inclusiveness thing a bit far. The strangest point in tonight's show was the performance by the soul/rap singer Brian McKnight. He swiveled his hips and sang a sexy hip-hop number, accompanied by a break-dancer in a do-rag and a sextet of babes in slinky black pantsuits, shaking their stuff. A large number of retired bankers and blue-haired Republican ladies looked on, not in horror but in what might be described as pure cultural bewilderment. Do Republicans really have to stage rap videos at their convention to prove how much they like black people?

There wouldn't have been much doubt from the rest of tonight's program. It began with Paul C. Harris Sr., a black Virginia legislator who holds the seat once held by Thomas Jefferson, and ended with Colin Powell, who said there were too many minority men in prison, then criticized "some in our party [who] miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped a few thousand black kids get an education." Along the way, it featured a black teacher from North Carolina, videos about three innovative schools filled with minority kids, Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts, a live broadcast from a black church in Philadelphia, and the re-creation, on the stage, of a Houston classroom at a mostly black charter school where the pupils shout out their multiplication tables call-and-response style. And most of the non-black faces on view were Hispanic.

It's basically a hopeful sign that the GOP now wants to compete with Democrats for minority votes, or at least feels compelled to be seen by moderate white voters as trying to compete for minority votes. But there was something off about the show the convention producers put on tonight. It has an element of insincerity and an element of condescension.

The insincerity flowed from the way the GOP simply seems to have dropped principles that conflict with its new "inclusiveness." Four years ago in San Diego, Powell drew boos when he stuck up for affirmative action. This time, the room broke into warm applause. To be sure, Republicans have long been hypocritical about affirmative action, practicing it while opposing it in principle. But where did the principle go? Out the window, apparently.

The condescension stems from the way a still overwhelmingly white party spent the evening showing off its black and Hispanic trophies. Beyond the platform, the GOP remains far short of integration. On the floor, there are very few minority delegates, as opposed to the vast preponderance of them onstage tonight. But what makes this feeling of patronization worse is the attitude of noblesse oblige that underlies it. Bush Republicans want to help the underprivileged, but out of charity rather than civic obligation or a sense of basic fairness. They expect gratitude in return. And they seem to view education, in particular, as a process whereby saintly people work miracles with minority children who would otherwise remain illiterate. Most minority children will never be touched by such privatized wonders.

To be sure, a party of rich white people that cares about poor black children is a big improvement over a party of rich white people that doesn't care about poor black children. But based on tonight's overdone attempt at a BET special, I'd say the Republicans still have a long way to go.

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Jacob Weisberg is editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and author of The Bush Tragedy.
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Reader Response from The Fray:


I took in the convention display for some time before being turned off by the over-extension of a hand to the minority population all at once. It did seem to me that the faces shown were a little too staged towards reeling in support from the under-represented minority population (I didn't see the Brian McKnight performance, and probably as well that I didn't, I might have keeled over). They seemed to have a well-thought-out platform, "Republicans With All of a Sudden Heart" as it would seem. Don't get me wrong, all of the intentions seem wonderful, if only they continue to stay that way. How many minorities are we going to see at the next Republican hoopla, when the old elephants don't want something in return?

--Alfonza Howard

(To reply, click here.)


1.You decry the lack of integration in the party, and make it seem as if the Republican Party simply uses the few members it has (as "trophies," you put it), yet decry the lack of integration in the makeup of the delegates. Putting aside process of selecting delegates (it is, in part, a self-selection process, so the implied accusation of bias is problematic), wouldn't it make logical sense to want to appeal to minority voters in an open (if ostentatious) way in order to make that delegate picture more look more diverse?

2. The statement, "Republicans want to help the underprivileged, but out of charity rather than civic obligation or a sense of basic fairness" seems to me a little odd. Where is this made clear, or even implied? If the answer is that Republican proposals to put programs helping the underprivileged through faith-based institutions makes it more "charity" than "civic obligation" because we're taking away the larger government role, then that answer misses the fundamental tenets of the Republican proposal: a) that private institutions (like a church) do a better job of helping people than the government, b) that such ways of helping the poor involve the community more directly , as opposed to dealing directly with a government beauraucracy, and c) that it is fundamentally not fair to take money from people who work hard for it and redistribute it in a way that many people disagree with (there's a freedom issue there, too, by the way), and instead people should be able to take that money and use it in a voluntary manner--with incentives--toward helping the underprivileged. That makes your next statement, that Republicans "expect gratitude in return" seem a bit shallow--not to mention you haven't cited much evidence in support of the claim.

3. What faction of the Republican Party believes that education is "a process whereby saintly people work miracles with minority children?" Actually, the entire voucher idea is intended to give poor parents with kids in bad public schools the power to make an immediate choice to help their child's education. You're right, many underprivileged children will "otherwise . . . never be touched" by the current system of private education--that's because they don't have the opportunity.

Your article presents a sort of circular argument: the Republican Party doesn't care about minorities, and the fact that it is trying to reach out to minorities proves it doesn't care about minorities. One would do well to look beyond the short shrift you give to the party and see the fundamental ideas about individual freedom, the role of government, and the potential of the community that shape proposed solutions to help the underprivileged before making an unconsidered assessment of Republican motivations.

--Chris Hart

(To reply, click here.)

(7/31)

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