RIGHT ON THE PROBLEM, WRONG ON THE ANSWER:

Erasing Trent Lott's legacy (Jack E. White, TIME)

I'm convinced that the Democratic Party's virtual monopoly on the black vote is bad for African Americans. It's the foundation of a demeaning form of political serfdom, a Plantation Politics that we will never be free of as long as Democrats take our votes for granted. We've been trying to find a way out of this bind since the 1960s, when militants proposed the creation of a black third party that could deliver our votes to the party that offered us most. [...]

Many blacks have become disillusioned by the cynicism of the Democrats' quadrennial rallying of the black vote, which typically involves sending out Jesse Jackson to round us up and deliver us to the polling place--only to ignore some issues that matter to blacks until the next election.

A case in point: a recent survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank based in Washington, shows that 60% of blacks support vouchers, but almost all prominent Democrats are staunchly opposed to them. They aren't even willing to find out whether giving black kids in lousy public schools the chance to attend private or parochial institutions could help close the academic gap between black and white students, the most urgent racial problem we're facing.

The hostility to vouchers is usually phrased in sanctimonious rhetoric about preserving the public school system--often mouthed by Democrats, including Jackson, who sent their children to private schools. That sort of hypocrisy helps explain why the Joint Center recently found that only 62% of blacks ages 18 to 35 identify themselves as Democrats, compared with more than 80% of blacks older than 35.

So far, only 6% of younger blacks say they are Republicans, but those numbers could grow if Republicans made a real effort to expand their outreach.

Mr. White is absolutely correct that lockstep black fealty to a Democrat Party that can therefore take them for granted is a disaster for black Americans. However, he seems rather confused about the steps that should follow this recognition. The series of Republican victories in recent years (since '94) have come with as little as single digit black support, suggesting that the GOP neither needs blacks nor "owes" them anything. Despite this, as Mr. White himself points out, the GOP is better on such issues as vouchers than Democrats.

So the question now is: what are blacks willing to do to solve what has become a major political problem for them (their servility to the Democrats) and to repay the Republican Party that has been carrying their water for free? Are blacks prepared to repay their debt to President Bush and the GOP, or will they continue to bite the hand that helps them?

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 26, 2003 11:55 AM