Black Republicans: Why they barely exist

I was reading Nate's blog about stereotypes for Black Republicans (you can find it on November 10, 2006). That post got me thinking along related lines as to why the Republican Party does so poorly among Black Americans. The Republicans, of course, are the party of Lincoln, whereas the Democratic Party was long associated with the South and oppression of blacks.

Obviously, one can cite recent history for the strong association between blacks and the Democratic Party. Beginning with FDR, the Democratic Party began reaching out to blacks simply by helping the poor and unemployed around the country during the Depression. With FDR, blacks across the North switched their allegiance. Truman continued the new tone of the Democratic Party by desegregating the military. And, finally, of course, it was the Democrats during the 1960s and 70s who led the way for passing civil rights laws. Concurrently, the Republican Party opposed many civil rights efforts due to a strong respect for "states' rights". Of course, the history of that term "states' rights" is one loaded with racial undertones. It was originally used in defense of slavery. Nonetheless, for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the proportion of Republican senators voting for the bill was greater than the proportion of Democratic senators voting for the bill, indicating that the long history of racial tolerance in the Republican Party going back to the Radical Republicans during and after the Civil War was still present.

Still, the Democratic Party was clearly wrenching itself over to the side of civil rights for blacks, whereas the Republican Party was wrenching itself over to the side of "states' rights". It is no surprise that, beginning with Strom Thurmond's break with the Democratic Party in 1948 over the desegregation of the military and his run for president as a Dixiecrat, many Southern Democrats began to switch parties from 1948 through the 1990s. This represented the expunging of the racist elements of the Democratic Party and the similar accruing of those elements into the Republican Party. This process was essentially complete in 1994, with the final demolition of the Democratic stronghold in the South, making it now the Solid Republican

How did the Republican Party accomplish this takeover of the South? Was it through a combination of winning over Southern blacks (who are socially conservative and religious) AND Southern whites, thereby creating a grand coalition? Hardly. No, the Republican Party used something called the Southern Strategy, beginning with Nixon's election in 1968. This strategy consisted of using "race as a wedge issue -- on matters such as desegregation and busing -- to appeal to white southern voters" (quote from here). You can see the effectiveness of this strategy by comparing presidential electoral maps from before '68 with those after. Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who has recently announced he is stepping down, told the NAACP that the Republican Party was wrong to use this strategy of dividing people in the South (same article). Of course, after you've already taken over a region, it's easy to apologize for how you did it. Sorry, Ken, but too little, too late.

So, even assuming that Mehlman's implication that the Republican Party is beyond its race-baiting past is right, why can't Republicans pick up more black votes? Surely, it is not purely socioeconomic, as the number of blacks who have moved into the middle and even upper classes has increased dramatically since the 60s. Such blacks continue to vote for the Democratic Party (see Prince George's County, MD). Certainly, whatever appeal the Republican Party has for socially conservative, rural, poor whites in the South should have the same appeal for socially conservative, rural, poor blacks in the South, right? The answer is, quite obviously, no.

First off, that line of thinking assumes that Black Americans have no memory whatsoever. For 350 years, Black Americans suffered entrenched and legal slavery (250 years) followed by entrenched and legal segregation and oppression (100 years). The past 40 years have been a slow, uneven march away from that, but that does not mean blacks have forgotten this past. Moreover, blacks are well aware of the Southern Strategy, of hearing "states' rights" praised by Republican politicians in the South, over the past 40 years and know that this comes from the Republican Party. Many of these old-timer politicians may have once been Democrats, but blacks are clearly well aware that the same faces have just switched parties. For Black Americans, this history is the defining feature of what it means to be a "Black American". It explains why recent African immigrants find little in common with Black Americans. Similar levels of melanin mean nothing beyond that. So, why should blacks suddenly jump from the party that has pushed for them and their causes and NOT used race against them in the past 40 years (i.e. the Democratic Party) and jump to the party that has done the opposite (i.e. the Republican Party)?

Mehlman would, most likely, argue that the Republican Party has changed and that their economic message should mean something to Black Americans and should capture a portion of their vote. However, before any message of economic prosperity or social conservatism reaches them, Black Americans are surely going to determine whether the message-bearers are not racist throwbacks. It is in that realm that the Republican Party fails utterly, regardless of whether blacks like the other messages from the Republican Party.

Here are two examples of how the Republican Party still doesn't get it. First, in 2002, Sen. Trent Lott (R- Miss.) made the following remarks:
South.

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president [in 1948 as a Dixiecrat], we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Although Lott (a Democrat who turned Republican in the 1970s; coincidence? I think not) apologized, it is simply not clear from the remarks what Lott could have meant by "all these problems" except the "problems" of integration and civil rights. It was, to many Americans, a brief moment when they could see that the inner racist, who had been hiding due to the fact that it was no longer acceptable to say such things, was always there. At this point, Lott was forced to step down as the new Majority Leader for the Senate. One might say that at least the Republican Party punished him for the remarks (but he's still a senator, right?). However, that would be incorrect. For the new incoming Congress, Lott was recently elected Minority Whip by the Republican Caucus in the Senate. Now, what kind of message does the Republican Party think it is sending to Black Americans when they re-elect this guy to a leadership position?

The second example comes from the recent campaign season. Despite Mehlman's apology for the Southern Strategy, his own RNC appeared not to get the message and ran an ad in the Senate race in Tennessee that smacked of racism. The Democratic candidate Harold Ford was black, and the Republican was white. The RNC ran an ad in which a white woman appeared to be suggesting that she and Harold were having a sexual relationship. Although this ad could appear to be ambiguous in its racial overtones to someone unfamiliar with American history, the fact is that race-baiting has often taken the form of suggesting that black men will steal white women, rape them, impregnate them, etc. At a minimum, race-baiting has often been used to remind racist whites in the South of the possibility of racial mixing, a great fear among such people. This ad smacked of all the implicit racism used in the Southern Strategy and outraged Black Americans (even Republican former Senator William Cohen called it a "very serious appeal to a racist sentiment"). The Republican candidate Bob Corker, of course, denounced the ad, but the RNC refused to pull it.

Out of the 9 competitive Senate races in 2006, the Democrats won all of them, EXCEPT for Ford's race in Tennessee. The ad proved decisive, as Corker's poll numbers improved following the ad and he never lost his lead. Once again, Mehlman could apologize for the Southern Strategy, but as I said before, it's easy to apologize for how you run a race AFTER you win. It's also easy with our compartmentalized system for the candidate himself to appear as a good guy (denouncing the ad) while simultaneously benefiting from the racist sentiments.

So, what can we conclude from all this? The Republican Party will NEVER appeal to a significant number of Black Americans, regardless of their platform's message, so long as they continue electing racists or using race-baiting as part of their campaigns. I could list more examples of the Republican Party's racist undertones, but this post is long enough and the examples given should suffice to show what I mean. I believe that, essentially, the Republican Party consists of three elements with regard to race. First, you have the closet racists -- their true feelings slip out every now and then (Trent Lott, George Allen). Second, you have the apologists -- they defend the closet racists by saying they were just innocent mistakes (and do things like make Lott part of the leadership again) and they claim not to see racism in the all the apparently racist symbols around (the ad against Harold Ford, the Confederate flag). This second part also doesn't mind benefiting from racial undertones in elections (Ken Mehlman). Third, you have the true non-racists. This third part used to be a much larger part of the Republican Party but has significantly diminished and, as shown by Lott's selection as whip, does not have the clout to force down the other elements.