Ignoring people of color

September 15, 2007

For most of the afternoon yesterday, the Huffington Post ran this headline at the top of the page, with pictures of the GOP’s top-tier: “A President For All White People.” Given the circumstances, the headline was only slightly hyperbolic.

Three of the four leading Republican presidential candidates turned down invitations to a PBS debate this month at a historically black college in Baltimore, leading moderator Tavis Smiley on Thursday to accuse them of ignoring minority voters. […]

“No one should be elected president of this country in 2008 if they think that along the way they can ignore people of color,” said Smiley, host of radio and TV talk shows. “If you want to be president of all America, you need to speak to all Americans.”
Smiley said he intends to press his case tonight on NBC’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno. “We’re talking about one 90-minute conversation,” he said. “It gives these Republicans a wonderful opportunity. They complain all the time that black and brown voters won’t give them a chance. We offer a platform on PBS.”

Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney all declined to participate, citing “scheduling problems.” Romney, concerned about racist appearances, distributed a list to reporters of black Florida supporters. (He did not, thankfully, say that some of his best campaign backers are African American.)

This seems to be part of a disconcerting pattern.

Late in the week, the Republican top tier is turning down an invitation to an event focused on the African-American community, and early in the week, the GOP is rebuffing the Latino community.

When Fox News and other English-language television networks extended presidential debate invitations earlier this year, Republican and Democratic primary candidates asked for the details.

But when Univision–the Spanish-language network with the top-rated local newscast in 16 media markets–scheduled an historic GOP debate on Latino issues for Sept. 16 in Miami, a week after a similar forum for Democrats, only Arizona Sen. John McCain accepted.

What’s worse, in the eyes of national Hispanic leaders and progressives who are keeping count, this is the third time in recent months that Republican presidential candidates have dissed the fastest-growing part of the electorate by passing up chances to address Latinos’ concerns about the Iraq war, health care, the economy and immigration.

The major Republican candidates also refused invitations to address NCLR, the National Council of La Raza, at its annual conference in July. In June, the only Republican to show up at the convention of the National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials was California Rep. Duncan Hunter, the patron of the border fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

And the Republican Party wonders why minority communities distrust the GOP.

Yeah! What this nation needs is a black president … like Alan Keyes! Everyone’s favorite wingnuttiest wingnut is running for president again as a Repub! This should ratchet up the wingnutiness scale of the other candidates as they fight for the title of absolutely most socially conservative candidate. Hey, Alan Keyes has the balls to disown his own lesbian daughter — not even Big Dick Cheney has been willing to do that.

  • First, why would the Republicans appear at a black event when over 90% of the black community automatically vote for Democrats. Would anyone expect a Democratic candidate to speak at the NRA convention or the Southern Baptist Convention?

    Second, since the Republican party will be out of business in a few years it does not really matter. A better question is how will blacks and hispanics be affect when the Democratic Party is the only political party in the U.S. and all of the previous Republican voters start voting in the Democratic Primary?

  • Of course, another way of looking at it is that the Dems are Gramscians who use Marxist/Stalinist tactics to keep “people of color” under control. Perhaps, for instance, someone who’s studied racial demagogues throughout history could tell us who Bill Richardson was trying to impersonate during the last debate. Someone from the Balkans perhaps?

    As for Smiley, his last debate featured RubenNavarrette on the panel, someone who frequently discusses immigration matters. Despite that, there were no questions about immigration. Somehow I don’t exactly trust that Smiley wants to discuss important issues but instead would engage in the same form of race-baiting he does above.

    As for the NCLR, they fund extremists and they won’t even denounce ElviraArellano (Ruben asked them to and they didn’t). And, NALEO has a direct link to the MexicanGovernment. So, perhaps not speaking to such groups is the wiser policy.

  • Superdestroyer: that is an excellent question. I’m glad to see the Democratic party become vibrant and rich (in many senses of the word) as all kinds of sensible people run screaming from the Repugs, to become Democrats instead.

    The problem is, as Michael Moore puts it: it’s absurd to expect that two parties can represent the widely-varied opinions and interests of hundreds of millions of people.

    We have the Capitalist Party, and the Other Capitalist Party. Woo-hoo! Land of the free!

    I hope that once the Repug party is totally and completely dead, then perhaps a new Green or Progressive Party might take shape, something like the “Social-Democratic” parties in Europe, on the more socialistic end of the left but still very much in the center. That’d leave the Democrats to occupy the “Capital-Democratic” (or “Corporate-Democratic”) end of the spectrum that they occupy now, and which is pretty much the mainstream in America today.

    I’d hope to see a battle in 20 years time between a Social-Democratic party and today’s Capital/Corporate Democratic party, and one in which the Social Democrats prevail. I think we have been getting a preview of this now with the battle between Dean/NetRoots vs. the DLC types. But I’d rather have this happen openly in regular elections, between different parties each with their own candidates, rather than as an internal battle between the Democratic party.

    In any case, such a battle must not be allowed to happen until well after the Rethugs have become defunct and present little or no threat of their returning. Otherwise they’d exploit it to divide-and-conquer.

    By the way, if you’re allergic to such drama, realize that it would have moved the entire debate of this country to the left. The news media will indeed jump all over the drama and excitement of the horserace, but it won’t be “Democrats Divided”, it’ll be, if you will, “Greens vs. Democrats”– I’d love that, because “center stage” would be one type of progressive lliberalism versus another. The Repugs wouldn’t be part of the game at all, marginalized off in a radical sideshow in the same the way that the left has been marginalized for the past 30 years.

  • goatchowder.

    Do you really think that blacks or hispanics are going to vote for a “progressive” party that is run by rich whites like those at the YearlyKos anymore than they would vote for Republicans.

    Also, do you think the current Democratic party would not be altered when all of the current Reublican voters start voting in the Democratic primary. At leaves all of the current Republican voters (about 35% of the voters) along with blacks, Hispanics, government workers, and the richest Americans in one party and leaves college professors, union types and NGO;s in the other. The demographics just do not support a socialist party. America’s diversity also will probably prohibit a socialist party from every getting started.

    In addition, if the U.S. was capable of creating viable third parties, a progressive party would have already started in some place like Chicago or DC that has had one party government for decades.

  • “Why would the Republicans appear at a black event when over 90% of the black community automatically vote for Democrats?”

    In order to pick up votes from some of the 90%, that’s why. Which came first, the 90% margin, or having their issues ignored by the Republicans at least since the days of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy?”

    Or perhaps it’s because Republican candidates are afraid that if they address the issues of minority voters, they will lose the support of the Republican base that has been built on the platform of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy.”

    “Would anyone expect a Democratic candidate to speak at the NRA convention or the Southern Baptist Convention?”

    I would be disappointed if a Democrat turned down an opportunity like that.

    The bigger question is, would the NRA or the Southern Baptist Convention invite a Democrat to speak? I doubt it.

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