Here we go again
Shows you how much I watch ABC News: I wasn't aware that Bob Zelnick had left back in 1998. Now working as chairman of the Department of Journalism at Boston University, he also moonlights as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. In yesterday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he opines on who is to blame (a popular word this week, no?) for the GOP losing black votes for the last 40 years. His answer sounds a lot like "blame the victim".
For years, my sense has been that black political leaders have traded nominal advantage for the real political clout more eclectic political allegiance could provide and embraced government "solutions" that impede the next great wave of African-American progress.Zelnick ends with the observation, "It is not the Republicans who are lost."
Perhaps his ire is directed toward those he describes (charitably) as "black political leaders", but I still don't like the sound of it. Republicans need to reach out to the black community, not point fingers. We can't very well cite high welfare and illegitimacy statistics in the black community for support (even though former Democrat Senator Pat Moynihan predicted those problems over 30 years ago) and expect to entice even one voter to switch to the GOP. Instead, we must continue to hold up traditional Republican ideals like building a strong national defense and keeping taxes low, but carry the message to the increasing numbers of black middle and upper-middle class workers who can see the benefit of voting Right - if we can just inspire them with a sincere appeal that we mean to include them in the rising tide of prosperity.
The more black Republicans we can inspire, the more Black Republicans we can recruit, the less people will make fun of me with the quip, "Oh, you're the one?!
Comments
Mr. Zelnick's argument is as valid as the "who's to blame" finger-pointing going on regarding the 9-11 commission... it serves no purpose except to score political points. The fact that I am a "Black Republican" is not just to get "Republicans" elected, but to improve the lot of all Americans - equally - in what I believe is the best way possible, and that is through conservatism. The problem I have with these "black leaders" is that all too often they seem to have their own interests at the forefront and not those for whom they proclaim to be advocates.
Blacks in this country have been, in the past, adversely treated - sometimes brutally. There was not then, and there is not now any argument that can or should be made in defense of that treatment. But having the Jacksons and Sharptons of the world look backwards and say "look what you did to us" serves neither the Black community nor the country as a whole. Has the Black community advanced or stagnated under their leadership? Did the prominent Blacks within our history achieve their greatness thanks to government largess, or in spite of it?
I want the people of this country to start looking forward to a better world, but I do not advocate that we forget our past - however reprehensible it may have been - because you learn from mistakes better that you do from successes. Looking back prevent moving forward, but remembering the past (a totally different concept) prevents us from repeating those mistakes.
If we want race relations to move forward, if we want this country to be one populated by Americans and not by dozens of hyphenated special interest groups, we have to start looking to where we are going, not where we've been.
Posted by: Steve J | April 15, 2004 03:57 AM