In the new issue of the Washington Monthly, T.A. Frank argues that New York Times columnist Bob Herbert is “boring,” writing easy-to-ignore pieces on the nation’s most valuable op-ed page. “Twice a week, Herbert yells at them for their indifference,” Frank notes. “Twice a week, they slam the door and run out for a joyride with badboy David Brooks.”
I can’t say whether Herbert saw the Washington Monthly piece or not, but I can’t help but notice that the veteran columnist has been a lot less dull since Frank’s article was published. Today, for example, Herbert notes that he’d like to see “a million angry protesters marching on the headquarters of the National Republican Party in Washington,” because, he argues, the GOP has demonstrated “just how anti-black their party really is.”
At the same time that the Republicans were killing Congressional representation for D.C. residents, the major G.O.P. candidates for president were offering a collective slap in the face to black voters nationally by refusing to participate in a long-scheduled, nationally televised debate focusing on issues important to minorities. […]
[The Republican candidates] won’t be there. They can’t be bothered debating issues that might be of interest to black Americans. After all, they’re Republicans.
This is the party of the Southern strategy — the party that ran, like panting dogs, after the votes of segregationist whites who were repelled by the very idea of giving equal treatment to blacks. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. (Willie Horton) Bush, George W. (Compassionate Conservative) Bush — they all ran with that lousy pack.
“Boring” this is not. Indeed, Herbert’s column reads a bit like an indictment of a party that’s been on the wrong side of the racial divide for far too long.
He reminds us of an appalling description of the GOP’s approach to race relations that I’d forgotten about.
In 1981, during the first year of Mr. Reagan’s presidency, the late Lee Atwater gave an interview to a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, explaining the evolution of the Southern strategy:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
Atwater was the original “architect” of modern Republican strategies, the one Karl Rove has hoped to emulate. And he was candid about exactly how the party sought to capitalize on racism for electoral gain.
And before you say, “Well, Atwater is from a bygone GOP era,” Herbert reminds us of the years since.
In 1991, the first President Bush poked a finger in the eye of black America by selecting the egregious Clarence Thomas for the seat on the Supreme Court that had been held by the revered Thurgood Marshall. The fact that there is a rigid quota on the court, permitting one black and one black only to serve at a time, is itself racist.
Mr. Bush seemed to be saying, “All right, you want your black on the court? Boy, have I got one for you.”
Republicans improperly threw black voters off the rolls in Florida in the contested presidential election of 2000, and sent Florida state troopers into the homes of black voters to intimidate them in 2004.
Blacks have been remarkably quiet about this sustained mistreatment by the Republican Party, which says a great deal about the quality of black leadership in the U.S. It’s time for that passive, masochistic posture to end.
On a related note, I’d add that today is the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine walking, under police protection, into a previously-segregated Central High School in Arkansas. Barack Obama issued a strong statement noting the anniversary.
“Five decades ago, the Little Rock Nine took the lead in America’s long march to freedom. Despite slurs, taunts, and all kinds of indignities, these nine students kept their heads high and their backs straight, integrating Little Rock Central High School, and helping realize our founding promise of justice and equality for all. They proved that Brown could work, signaling the beginning of the end of Jim Crow, and making a life of hope and opportunity possible for someone like me.
“And yet a half-century later, much work remains. Too many of our schools are crumbling. Disparities have widened. And our Supreme Court has argued that voluntary integration is the same as Jim Crow segregation, that promoting diversity in our schools is tantamount to the plight of Linda Brown or the Little Rock 9.
“But I’m hopeful. Because fifty years ago, nine young men and women showed the world that in the face of impossible odds, ordinary people could do extraordinary things. And that’s what we saw last week, when ten thousand Americans rallied to the side of justice in Jena. So if we’re serious about living up to our founding ideals, we need to reconnect our politics with the core decency of the American people — we need to recapture in this country the dignity and courage embodied by the Little Rock Nine. And we need to do the hard work to make sure that this nation lives up to its creed.”
And some us have to work harder than others.