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Once the party of Lincoln, although not necessarily of abolition per se, the Republicans secured African American votes until the political sea-changes after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal further cemented Democratic Party proposals to African American hopes and ideals; and a Democrat, Harry S. Truman desegregated the U.S. armed forces after World War II. A moderate Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, sent troops to support court ordered desegregation in Little Rock, an economically conservative Democrat, John F. Kennedy was in Dallas to shore up Democratic support before he was assassinated. Forty years later, the “N” word is no longer social acceptable. Discrimination in schools and the workplace are violations of law, and there has been significant progress – Senator Barack Obama, an African-American, is the nominee of a major party. And, there’s the rub for some Republicans.
It is not true that Republicans are racist, but it is true that the GOP tends to attract more racists to its banners; because while the GOP may rant that the Democrats are “elitist,” it is that pervasive subterranean strain of nativism and class association that buttresses their ideology. They, the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants, of the nation, are the ones who are “supposed” to be running the country. Their antecedents can be found in Massachusetts which sought to discourage Irish-American voting by establishing a two year waiting period between naturalization and voting in 1859. The Nativists determined that the Irish were un-democratic, subservient to the Roman Catholic Church, and were “childlike, indolent, and slaves of passion…unsuited for republican freedom.” New Mexico, deemed as having too many Native Americans in the potential electorate, was denied statehood until 1912. [Foner]
Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Reagan’s use of Philadelphia, MS during his initial foray into the 1980 campaign, and his “Welfare Queen” anecdotes tapped into that subterranean nativist virus infecting our body politic. The “poor,” often associated with African-American, are “indolent, slaves of passion, and unsuited for republican freedom.” In our modern era, when it is no longer acceptable to use racial epithets, the virus erupts in code.
American viewers have been treated to the video clip in which a white woman tells presidential candidate John McCain that she’s opposed to Obama because he’s “An Arab.” The candidate, to his credit, took back the microphone. One can easily assume that the lady in that audience couldn’t say “He’s a ‘N…’” so she settled for the most convenient code – Arab. Dark, as in the old expression “Blackamoor,” or African-American. Just as “Birth of a Nation” depicted African-Americans as “The Other” in an earlier era, the GOP surrogates have portrayed Senator Obama as “associated with terrorists,” or “tied to ACORN,” or “naive…inexperienced…unfit to lead,” or – “indolent, slaves of passion, and unsuited for republican freedom.”
Once the poor were Irish, who were “corrupt,” and “indolent followers of party bosses,” now the national stereotype shifts to poor as inner city African-Americans, replete with indolent Welfare Queens, corrupt community organizers, who follow more modern party bosses in blind subservience to party machines. As white conservative voters in the Republican Party seek to characterize Senator Obama as “arrogant,” (read uppity) or “Arab” (read dark skinned ‘other’) they increasingly run up against the reality of American demographics; which, in turn, feeds the GOP’s concern for “voting purity.”
The Republicans rail against the potential “vote fraud” stemming from ACORN voter registrations, further conceding the point that what they really fear is that their white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant votes may be diluted by the 1.3 million Americans of color, and perhaps of lower socio-economic status, who have registered for the upcoming election. Rick Hasen argues effectively that the current attack on ACORN’s registration efforts also has a tactical angle: To establish a basis for challenging Democratic voters at the polls, and to “lay the groundwork to contest the outcome of the presidential election in the event of an extremely close result in a battleground state.” Hasen sums up, “From little ACORNs can come mighty lawsuits.” The states mentioned in the NYT’s article have all assured voters that “no eligible voter will be turned away from the polls.” [TPMec] The use of the word “purge” in Republican efforts to suppress voting by minorities is instructive.
To purge means to “rid of whatever is impure or undesirable; to cleanse or purify.” [Dict] Evidently, some members of the GOP would like to “purge” this nation’s voter rolls of those “indolent, slavish, unfit” voters not ready for full participation in our republic. John Ridley posits that this tactic may not secure them the election, but actually result in their defeat. Unlike the recent Tennessee race in which a racially charged ad may have helped cost an African-American a senate seat, the Obama vs. McCain contest is national, and national demographics do not favor Republican candidates long tethered to the nativist, if not purely racist, strain in their organizational DNA. Senator Obama is holding a 2-1 edge over Senator McCain among Hispanic voters, who could turn the tide in Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and North Carolina. African-American voters gave Democratic candidate John Kerry 85% support in 2004, a number that could increase in 2008. 41% of Asian-American voters now favor Senator Obama to 24% who say they support McCain’s candidacy.
The outreach program launched by former Republican chair Ken Mehlman ground to a halt when GOP surrogates reverted to using the term, “uppity,” and conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh advised Hispanics to “shut up or get out,” and when Senator McCain not only blew-off David Letterman, but Tavis Smiley’s American Presidential Forum at Morgan State University. [HuffPo]
So, we ought not be surprised when an Obama supporter happened on a GOP meet up in the Gandy Boulevard Starbucks in Tampa, FL and recounted the experience, including the comment made to him by a McCain supporter after the Obama supporter identified himself: “They changed the subject for a while, but on the way out the door one of the men told me “you are a disgrace to white people if you vote for that man.”
We have moved through our history thus far with a “two-party” system, but should the GOP so isolate itself as to become the White People’s Party then it can only become more intolerant and less relevant – and that would, indeed, be a national tragedy.
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