Is Bush A Racist?

[LoneVoice]

Originally posted by dmp
Right - stop basing your decisions on the argument you 'hear' - and spend a couple hours doing REAL research..

That added nothing to the conversation. Sounds like a cheap way to cast an insult, and say nothing of value at the same time.

OK genius, why don't you try saying something that adds to the conversation?

 

[BlackMan]

This article from the Boston Globe is only about a former Republican party chairman, the same Haley Barbour discussed above by a college student organization.

Barbour's racist links tar Bush too

By Derrick Z. Jackson, 10/22/2003

AT THE ASIAN economic summit in Bangkok, President Bush condemned the recent anti-Jewish tirade of Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Bush said it was "wrong and divisive" and "stands squarely against what I believe."
When Bush gets home, there is more wrong and divisive politicking he should stand squarely against: The good ol' boy antics of Haley Barbour.

Barbour is the former chairman of the Republican National Committee who is running for governor of Mississippi. In mid-September Bush spoke at a fund-raiser for Barbour in Jackson, Miss., that attracted 1,100 people and raised at least $1.2 million.
At the luncheon, Bush said he was "proud to be on stage with the future Mississippi governor."

Bush continued: "I know him. This isn't just your typical hot air. I know him well. He recounted some of our history. We've been friends for a long time. . . . he never forgot his roots."
Some of Barbour's roots were exposed this month when it was reported that a photo of Barbour is on the home page of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the racist group that is an offshoot of the old segregationist white citizens councils that tried to hold back the civil rights movement. The photo was taken at a county political barbecue. Barbour is pictured along with five other men, including CCC field director Bill Lord.
The CCC gained notoriety in the mid-1990s when it became known that Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader, also from Mississippi, had spoken before it. Nothing has changed about the CCC. Its website is full of direct links to blatant racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia.

The home page features an article titled "In Defense of Racism." The article maintains that "certain racial groups show a marked proclivity for physical violence. Generally, those racial groups possess lower IQs. . . . No amount of learning, welfare, affirmative action, or socialization will interfere with the behavioral response of lower IQ races. . . . Blacks, who are given to physical violence at a rate 50 times that of whites, Mexicans, and certain Pacific Islanders, are among these groups."
Among the things that Mohamad said that White House spokesman Scott McClellan condemned as "hate-filled" was that "Jews rule the world by proxy. . . . they have now gained control of the most powerful countries."
You can find almost exactly the same notions in the "Defense of Racism." The article says, "Even the seemingly amenable Jew carries the DNA which will cause his progeny to want to control our offspring."

Particularly galling is that Barbour has refused to ask the CCC to take the photo of him off its home page. "I don't care who has my picture," Barbour was quoted as saying in an Associated Press article. He continued: "Once you start down the slippery slope of saying `That person can't be for me,' then where do you stop? Old segregationists? Former Ku Klux Klan like Robert Byrd?"
That tired reference to the Democratic senator from West Virginia, who, like President Johnson, matured out of his racist roots to support policies meant to overcome the effects of racism, cannot mask the fact that Barbour is in bed with today's segregationists. It cannot mask the fact that the Republican Party, at its root, cannot kick today's racists out of bed.

Barbour has reportedly invited Bush to come back for another rally on Nov. 1, three days before the election. If Barbour remains pigheaded about the photo and what it represents, it puts Bush in the position of continuing the cowardice he displayed in the 2000 campaign, where he spoke at Bob Jones University in South Carolina without any reference to its ban on interracial dating, its threats to kick gay alumni off campus, and its anti-Catholic history.
At his September speech, Bush acknowledged several luminaries in the audience, including Mississippi's Senator Trent Lott, who was forced to step down as majority leader after glorifying former senator Strom Thurmond's segregationist past. Bush said of Lott, "We both love our country."

Lott long ago made it clear that in his mind, "our country" was a white-run country. Barbour has defiantly picked up Lott's mantle. In the September fund-raiser, Bush said that Barbour is "a fellow that when he picks up the phone, the president might just go ahead and answer it." If Bush answers the phone to come to Mississippi, he has to first condemn Barbour's tacit support of the CCC's use of his photo. Otherwise he has hung up on millions of Americans. Once again, the compassionate conservative coddles hate.

 

[jimnyc]

Blackman - Please cite sources when posting articles here. It'll save me a lot of possible headaches. Thanks

 

[BlackMan]

Thought I did give you the citation. Boston Globe on the date indicated by the author indicated.

 

[Zhukov]

Why is it if the President is friends with a guy who has bbq's with the CCC, whatever that is, he's automatically a rascist, but if he is friends with black people he's not automatically not a rascist? Isn't that sort of a double standard? Yes, I think it is.

At any rate, here's a good test: ask one of our resident white supremacists if they would have black people in their cabinet giving them important information everyday, because they are the real deal.

 

[LoneVoice]

Originally posted by Zhukov
Why is it if the President is friends with a guy who has bbq's with the CCC, whatever that is, he's automatically a rascist, but if he is friends with black people he's not automatically not a rascist? Isn't that sort of a double standard? Yes, I think it is.

At any rate, here's a good test: ask one of our resident white supremacists if they would have black people in their cabinet giving them important information everyday, because they are the real deal.

If public perception required it or they wouldn't be in office, and if they wanted the office desperately enough, then some of them might actually do it.

So, what's your point?

 

[Zhukov]

What? Please write a bit more coherently.

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

Originally posted by LoneVoice
If public perception required it or they wouldn't be in office, and if they wanted the office desperately enough, then some of them might actually do it.

So, what's your point?

Using that logic you could point a racist finger at anybody.

This accusation might hold a thimble full of water if the only black people in the Bush administration were of a lower level. When a black man and a black woman hold two very important positions it's a losing argument.

 

[MtnBiker]

Let's not dismiss Rod Paige.

 

[Zhukov]

Evidently you understood that gruesome sentence Jimmy. I don't suppose you could translate it for me?

 

[LoneVoice]

Originally posted by Jimmyeatworld
Using that logic you could point a racist finger at anybody.

This accusation might hold a thimble full of water if the only black people in the Bush administration were of a lower level. When a black man and a black woman hold two very important positions it's a losing argument.

Somewhat agreed... that's why I wasn't making that claim directly. If you read my earlier post it says that.

If you read my longer posts it is directed towards Bush and Republican tendency towards rascist / oppressive policy decisions.

 

[LoneVoice]

Originally posted by LoneVoice

If public perception required that a white supremecist put Blacks in positions on their staff or they wouldn't be able to get in office, and if the supremecist wanted the office desperately enough, then some of them might actually do it.

This line of reasoning is not the main essence of this thread.... Let's get back to the points discussed....

That's why I asked the question....

 

[sitarro]

Who are the racists?
Be cautious. For example, what's one of the first things most racist people say... "I'm not rascist, I have Black friends". That alone, does not mean that you don't have racial tendencies.

But, on the other hand, selecting, coordinating with, and working with 2 blacks on his main staff is definitely a clear sign of non-racial tendencies.

(Of course there is always that perception thing that can often be done for politics: hmmm there is a perception that our constituency is rascist, how can we counter that? Ah... all we have to do is put Blacks at certain positions --- which is really an indirect form of affirmative action by disguise). Just to let you know, I, personally, am not making claims at this time, that that is what occured in this case....]

This would be the prime example of the asswipe argument against the line that says that "I'm not racist , some of my best friends are black " . It is a no win argument . If you say you have black friends(no matter how true that is) that is used against you even stronger than if you would have said I don't know any blacks . It is a typical example of the circular arguments that the left have perfected in their own minds. It is the same as the way that you clowns never answer a direct question , you answer with questions. It finally gets to the point where the sane person doesn't want to bother dealing with you .
The fact is that some of my best friends have been black , lesbians , and homosexuals , period . I have also been very close to a Mexican family , a French family , and an Asian family .That is just a fact . My neighbors that live across the street are black . We don't spend a lot of time socializing , we don't have much in common . That doesn't mean that I don't like them , that just means that they have their friends and I have mine .They spend time with friends from their church , I am not interested in church business. I do value my friendship with them and have conversations with them often . I do tend to be the one that goes to them , I tend to be somewhat outgoing , I never felt it was because they were racist towards whites . I guess if I looked for that I could assume that they are racist and that is why they don't come to me .
I am sorry that I am "all over the place" . I am not as well practiced at defending the place I am from as being not racist as you are at accusing half of the country of being racist . Most of the crap that you have spewed is the standard tripe that is typical from the latent racist liberal . You guys go around collecting people of different races to surround yourself with to prove to the world that you aren't racist , but deep down inside you wouldn't dare spend any time with them . You act out of guilt just as the hypocrites in Hollywood do. You try to prove your amazing tolerance by accusing the Republicans of being intolerant but then your true colors always come out . You use symbols to prove your accusations wether there is any validity to them or not, The Confederate Battle flag , NASCAR , golf , etc. etc. . The fact is that the idea of racism is seen equally with all races . Humans tend to hang out with others that we have something in common with . That can be the color of skin , club membership , profession , the school you attend , etc. . Some have just gotten used to putting everything into racial terms because over the years they have found success with those tactics. I don't find those claims that valid, I guess it has come from the "crying wolf" too often. It just isn't always about racism .
What it comes down to is that you accuse our President of being a racist and I say that I don't buy it , the fact that you are accusing him makes youmore of a racist.
oh by the way , it is not Justice Thomas's job to make rulings in favor of any group , his job is to interpret the Constitution and the law .

 

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by BlackMan
Thought I did give you the citation. Boston Globe on the date indicated by the author indicated.

I'm assuming you didn't retype the entire article from a newspaper. If you copy n paste an article from the internet you should always leave a link to the original source. I, as the board owner, can get in trouble with copyright issues.

 

[William Joyce]

I hate to disappoint the colorblind conservatives on this board, but I really must object to the constant pointing to Powell, Rice and Thomas as examples of how "nonracist" the Republicans are.

1. Look closely at a picture of Powell. He must be the whitest black person I've ever seen. Of course folks are comfortable with him around. Try Ludacris as Secretary of State --- then you'll see 'em start to squirm. In any event, Powell's rise is attributable to a combination of his ability and his race. Hard to separate the two. Conservatives look silly saying he made it to Secretary of State by himself, and that his race had nothing to do with it.

2. Rice is genuinely bright, but she never would have ascended to her Stanford position and then the cabinet as a white woman. Ever. Same goes for

3. Thomas. Nobody seriously believes he was the smarted federal circuit judge at the time of his nomination. Do you think the ONLY SC justice to remain absolutely silent during oral argument (except to rant and rave during the race-based decisions, like Virgina v. Black) is the sign of a truly talented jurist? Nah.

Point is, Republicans gather up a few cardboard cutout blacks to protect themselves from the accusation of racism. Bush loves to do this. But it's all a game. Republicans should have the guts to say that the party is today for whites and their group interests, period.

 

[MtnBiker]

Originally posted by MtnBiker
Let's not dismiss Rod Paige.

Again

 

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by BlackMan
This article from the Boston Globe is only about a former Republican party chairman, the same Haley Barbour discussed above by a college student organization.

Barbour's racist links tar Bush too

By Derrick Z. Jackson, 10/22/2003

AT THE ASIAN economic summit in Bangkok, President Bush condemned the recent anti-Jewish tirade of Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Bush said it was "wrong and divisive" and "stands squarely against what I believe."
When Bush gets home, there is more wrong and divisive politicking he should stand squarely against: The good ol' boy antics of Haley Barbour.

Barbour is the former chairman of the Republican National Committee who is running for governor of Mississippi. In mid-September Bush spoke at a fund-raiser for Barbour in Jackson, Miss., that attracted 1,100 people and raised at least $1.2 million.
At the luncheon, Bush said he was "proud to be on stage with the future Mississippi governor."

Bush continued: "I know him. This isn't just your typical hot air. I know him well. He recounted some of our history. We've been friends for a long time. . . . he never forgot his roots."
Some of Barbour's roots were exposed this month when it was reported that a photo of Barbour is on the home page of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the racist group that is an offshoot of the old segregationist white citizens councils that tried to hold back the civil rights movement. The photo was taken at a county political barbecue. Barbour is pictured along with five other men, including CCC field director Bill Lord.
The CCC gained notoriety in the mid-1990s when it became known that Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader, also from Mississippi, had spoken before it. Nothing has changed about the CCC. Its website is full of direct links to blatant racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia.

The home page features an article titled "In Defense of Racism." The article maintains that "certain racial groups show a marked proclivity for physical violence. Generally, those racial groups possess lower IQs. . . . No amount of learning, welfare, affirmative action, or socialization will interfere with the behavioral response of lower IQ races. . . . Blacks, who are given to physical violence at a rate 50 times that of whites, Mexicans, and certain Pacific Islanders, are among these groups."
Among the things that Mohamad said that White House spokesman Scott McClellan condemned as "hate-filled" was that "Jews rule the world by proxy. . . . they have now gained control of the most powerful countries."
You can find almost exactly the same notions in the "Defense of Racism." The article says, "Even the seemingly amenable Jew carries the DNA which will cause his progeny to want to control our offspring."

Particularly galling is that Barbour has refused to ask the CCC to take the photo of him off its home page. "I don't care who has my picture," Barbour was quoted as saying in an Associated Press article. He continued: "Once you start down the slippery slope of saying `That person can't be for me,' then where do you stop? Old segregationists? Former Ku Klux Klan like Robert Byrd?"
That tired reference to the Democratic senator from West Virginia, who, like President Johnson, matured out of his racist roots to support policies meant to overcome the effects of racism, cannot mask the fact that Barbour is in bed with today's segregationists. It cannot mask the fact that the Republican Party, at its root, cannot kick today's racists out of bed.

Barbour has reportedly invited Bush to come back for another rally on Nov. 1, three days before the election. If Barbour remains pigheaded about the photo and what it represents, it puts Bush in the position of continuing the cowardice he displayed in the 2000 campaign, where he spoke at Bob Jones University in South Carolina without any reference to its ban on interracial dating, its threats to kick gay alumni off campus, and its anti-Catholic history.
At his September speech, Bush acknowledged several luminaries in the audience, including Mississippi's Senator Trent Lott, who was forced to step down as majority leader after glorifying former senator Strom Thurmond's segregationist past. Bush said of Lott, "We both love our country."

Lott long ago made it clear that in his mind, "our country" was a white-run country. Barbour has defiantly picked up Lott's mantle. In the September fund-raiser, Bush said that Barbour is "a fellow that when he picks up the phone, the president might just go ahead and answer it." If Bush answers the phone to come to Mississippi, he has to first condemn Barbour's tacit support of the CCC's use of his photo. Otherwise he has hung up on millions of Americans. Once again, the compassionate conservative coddles hate.

Here's a link to the original article:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...003/10/22/barbours_racist_links_tar_bush_too/

 

[Zhukov]

Originally posted by LoneVoice
If public perception required that a white supremecist put Blacks in positions on their staff or they wouldn't be able to get in office, and if the supremecist wanted the office desperately enough, then some of them might actually do it.

This line of reasoning is not the main essence of this thread.... Let's get back to the points discussed....

That's why I asked the question....

Ok, that's what I thought, but I wanted to be sure.

That is a stupid assertion. President Bush assembled his cabinet after his election. I had never even heard of Condolezza Rice until she assumed her post. She's there because she is a brilliant woman. Period.

Did President Bush run on the platform, "I'm going to have a black man as my Secretary of State," ?

General Powell holds his office because he is a capable man and an American hero. Period.

 

[Zhukov]

Originally posted by William Joyce

Rice is genuinely bright, but she never would have ascended to her Stanford position and then the cabinet as a white woman. Ever.

And you know that for a fact, right?

 

[BlackMan]

Too many posters have challenged the idea that the Republican party is founded on old Jim Crow racism. This piece may be long but it is quite educational and may put to rest the denial that is often used to defend the party as being other than racist. You will note that there are references to Clinton's manipulation of race: remember his promise to 'change welfare as we know it.' This was obvious pandering to just enough white voters to put him over top, yet retain full Black support. His record as a nonracist otherwise speaks for itself.


RACISM AND PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS SINCE 1964: A SHORT HISTORY. By Ted Glick, RacismWatch (Znet, February 19, 2004)

(The brief overview below is largely drawn from two books, "The Great Wells of Democracy," by Manning Marable, and "Nixon's Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton," by Kenneth O'Reilly. This is a modified version of a presentation I made at a January 31st meeting in Atlanta, Ga. which developed plans for a 2004 Racism Watch.)

Racism within U.S. institutions, law and culture is deeply imbedded in the history and reality of the United States going back to the 17th century, but in the 20th century, the deliberate and overt use of racially-coded language and positions in Presidential campaigns was begun in 1968 by the Richard Nixon campaign. Even Barry Goldwater, conservative Republican that he was, made an agreement in 1964 with Lyndon Johnson to keep race out of the Presidential contest between them. "'If we attacked each other,' Goldwater explained, 'the country would be divided into different camps and we could witness bloodshed.' Sensitive to the charge hurled 'again and again. . . that I was a racist,' he stuck to his word even in the campaign's last desperate days when fringe advisor F. Clifton White produced a documentary film intended to exacerbate white fears of black urban violence. Goldwater condemned the film and ordered it suppressed." (O' Reilly, p. 251) But by 1968, with the dramatic spread of the black freedom movement all over the country and uprisings in the cities, and with the emergence of George Wallace running a racist third party American Independent Party campaign, the Nixon crowd made a very conscious decision to completely abandon the Republican Party's anti-slavery roots. (Abraham Lincoln won the Presidency in 1860 in a three way race as the candidate of the newly-formed, somewhat-anti-slavery Republican Party.) In the words of Manning Marable, "(Dwight D.) Eisenhower had received the support of 39 percent of the African-American electorate in his 1956 successful reelection campaign, and at the time the Republican Party had a strong liberal wing that was pressuring the White House to take bolder steps on racial policy." (p. 118) Twelve years later, that historical legacy was deliberately jettisoned and, instead, "law and order," getting "welfare bums" off welfare and opposition to busing became the major issues for Nixon, Vice-Presidential candidate Spiro Agnew and their ilk. "'You can forget about the Vietnam war as an issue,' an NBC pollster told a White House aide [to Lyndon Johnson]. 'Race is the dominant issue without any question. '" (O'Reilly, p. 274)

Nixon barely squeaked through with 43.4% of the popular vote in 1968, but by 1972 the "remarkable racial realignment within the national Democratic Party [via the influx of African American voters] unfortunately created the context for the ideological and organizational transformation of the Republican Party as well. The stage for the triumph of racial conservatism in the Republican Party was set by Nixon, who successfully put together a center-right coalition, the so-called 'Silent Majority,' winning a little more than 60% of the popular vote against liberal Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972. The Watergate scandal slowed, but did not stop, the acceleration of the Republicans to the Far Right, especially on issues of race. The former Dixiecrats [of the Democratic Party] and supporters of George Wallace gravitated to the Republican Party and within a decade began to assume leadership positions in Congress." (Marable, p. 72)

The 1972 landslide victory of Nixon affected the Democrats. In 1976, Jimmy Carter, southern evangelical Christian, won the Presidential race over Gerald Ford. While more liberal than Ford, "Carter also sent mixed messages during the 1976 push for the White House. The most controversial were his remarks about busing and use of the phrase 'ethnic purity' to describe white-ethnic enclaves and neighborhood schools. . . Follow-up questions . . . led to additional warnings from the candidate about 'alien groups' and 'black intrusion.' 'Interjecting into [a community] a member of another race' or 'a diametrically opposite kind of family' or a 'different kind of person' threatened what Carter called the admirable value of 'ethnic purity." (O'Reilly, p. 339)

The Reagan/Bush Era

Carter's statements, however, were easily overtaken by the Nixon-like approach used by Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan officially kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in Neshoba County, at a fairgrounds used as a meeting place by the KKK and other racist groups. This was also the part of the state where, in 1964, civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were killed, about which Reagan said nothing.

As Marable explains, "Reagan never used blatantly racist language, because he didn't have to. As sociologist Howard Winant astutely observed, the New Right's approach to the public discourse of race was characterized by an 'authoritarian version of color-blindness,' an opposition to any government policies designed to redress blacks' grievances or to compensate them for either the historical or contemporary effects of discrimination, and the subtle manipulation of white's racial fears. The New Right discourse strove to protect white privilege and power by pretending that racial inequality no longer existed." (p. 73)
All through the 80's, with the dominance of the Reaganites and the emergence of the center-right Democratic Leadership Council within the Democratic Party, the powers-that-be within both parties followed similar scripts during Presidential campaigns. Michael Dukakis, the Democratic standard-bearer in 1988, followed Reagan's example and went to Neshoba County, Ms. in early August, soon after the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Like Reagan, he did not mention Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney. He did this despite the strength of Jesse Jackson's Presidential primary campaign and the existence of the National Rainbow Coalition.

But it was George Bush's campaign manager in 1988, Lee Atwater, who came up with probably the most infamous, modern use of racism during a Presidential campaign, the outrageous linkage of Dukakis to Willie Horton.

The Willie Horton Outrage

Ironically, it was DLC Democrat Al Gore, in April during Democratic Party primary debate, who first mentioned the Horton case. William J. Horton, Jr. was an African American man in prison for murder who, while on his ninth furlough from prison in Massachusetts, jumped furlough. He was eventually arrested in Maryland and charged with assault, kidnap and rape of two Maryland citizens. "Atwater called him 'Willie' (a name Horton never went by), hoping to get more racial mileage. . . Atwater made sure that Dukakis, as governor of Massachusetts, got the blame for Horton's latest crimes. . . 'Every woman in this country,' a Bush strategist boasted to Elizabeth Drew, 'will know what Willie Horton looks like before this election is over.' Atwater repeated that boast over and over. . . 'Willie Horton,' he told a Republican Unity meeting, 'will [soon] be a household name.' A month later, on July 9, he alerted Republican leaders in Atlanta to a Jesse Jackson sighting 'in the driveway of his [Dukakis's] home' and then offered this speculation: 'Maybe he will put this Willie Horton on the ticket after all is said and done.' That same day Atwater told the press about 'a fellow named Willie Horton who for all I know may end up being Dukakis' running mate.' At the time, Bush was down eighteen points to the Massachusetts governor in the polls. . . "By the time the regular Bush campaign ran [a] television spot featuring black and white cons heading to prison through a turnstile gate and then heading back toward middle-America's living room, Willie Horton was already firmly established in the public mind. The official ad did not mention Horton. It merely emphasized 'revolving door' justice and implied (falsely) that Dukakis had sent 268 first-degree murderers out on 'weekend passes' to rape, kidnap and kill.

"Dukakis remained oddly silent through most of this. He responded occasionally by citing dry statistics; more often not at all. . . Dukakis remained silent for the three months it took Lee Atwater to make Willie Horton his running mate for a variety of reasons. . . 'Whites might be put off. . . if we 'whine' about racism' [some advisers counseled]. In all probability, however, Dukakis remained silent because he wanted to disassociate his candidacy from his party's [liberal] reputation. He remained silent for the same reason that he failed to mention Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman on August 4 when speaking at the Neshoba County Fair-a silence that Marian Wright Edelman called the campaign's most disgraceful moment." (O'Reilly, p. 381-388)

Bill Clinton and the DLC

When DLC'er Bill Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee against Bush in 1992 he soon demonstrated that he was a very different type of candidate than Michael Dukakis. "By late May 1992 Bill Clinton had all but sown up his party 's presidential nomination, but in national polls he was running a poor third in the projected general election that was only months away, behind the incumbent president, George Bush, and independent candidate H. Ross Perot. What Clinton needed was an event to distinguish himself as a 'different kind of Democrat.' Following Reagan's model, he decided to manipulate the politics of race. . . Clinton had been scheduled to speak before the national convention of the Rainbow Coalition and, without informing Jackson in advance, decided to distance himself from the black community. Although the speech was designed to focus on issues such as urban enterprise zones and the earned-income tax credit, Clinton unexpectedly attacked the Rainbow Coalition's invitation to rap artist Sister Souljah to speak the previous evening. 'You had a rap singer here last night named Sister Souljah,' Clinton stated. 'Her comments before and after [the] Los Angeles [civil disturbances following the not guilty Rodney King verdicts] were filled with a kind of hatred that you do not honor today and tonight'. . . Clinton's rhetorical maneuver paralleled Ronald Reagan's attack against 'welfare queens' and George Bush's 'Willie Horton' advertisements. It was a strategically planned stunt, and it worked. Clinton followed it up with national interviews, explaining that 'if you want to be president, you've got to stand up for what you think is right.'" (Marable, pps. 79-80)
But this wasn't the only instance of racial pandering. In January Clinton left New Hampshire prior to the primary vote to return to Arkansas to preside over the execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a black man who had killed a police officer 11 years earlier but who had shot himself in the head afterwards, leaving him with the mental capacity of a child. In March he posed with fellow DLC-er and Georgia Senator Sam Nunn for pictures in front of forty mostly black prisoners in their prison uniforms. "Jesse Jackson called it a moderately more civilized 'version of the Willie Horton situation.' Two weeks later, on the day after the Illinois and Michigan primaries, Clinton again showed he was a different type of Democrat by golfing nine holes, accompanied by a television camera crew, at a segregated Little Rock country club." (O'Reilly, p. 410) "Bill Clinton calculated that he could not win in 1992 unless he used Sister Souljah to bait Jesse Jackson, put a black chain gang in a crime control ad, golfed at a segregated club with a TV camera crew in tow, and allowed that search for a serviceable vein in Rickey Ray Rector's arm." (O'Reilly, p. 420)

Clinton had a much easier opponent in 1996, Bob Dole, but he wasn't going to take any chances, so he "decided to use the issue of welfare as the vehicle to shore up his support among white male voters. Only days before the 1996 Democratic National Convention, Clinton signed the 'Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act,' with the stated goal of 'ending welfare as we know it.' . . . Clinton repeatedly criticized the lack of 'personal responsibility' of those on public assistance." (Marable, p. 82)

Gush and Gore

2000 brought us Bush and Gore, or as some called it, Gush and Bore. The most memorable thing about their three Presidential debates and their campaigns in general was how similar they were on the issues, how little Democrat Gore tried to draw out major areas of disagreement with Republican Bush. "The greatest tragedy of the 2000 presidential race, from the vantage point of the African-American electorate, was that the black vote would have been substantially larger if the criminal-justice policies put in place by the Clinton-Gore administration had been different. . . more than 4.2 million Americans were prohibited from voting in the 2000 presidential election because they were in prison or had in the past been convicted of a felony. . . In effect, it was the repressive policies of the Clinton-Gore administration that helped to give the White House to the Republicans." (Marable, pps. 88-89)

Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court had much to do with the Bush victory, building upon the deliberate removal from the voter roles of literally tens of thousands of eligible black voters by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris in Florida. And, over three years later, the Democratic Party has done virtually nothing to challenge that disenfranchisement or even to make it an issue during this 2004 election year. "Neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party, as a political organization, is interested in transforming the public discourse on race, though for different reasons. The Republicans deliberately use racial fears and white opposition to civil rights-related issues like affirmative action to mobilize their conservative base. The national Democratic Party mobilizes its black voter base, in order to win elections, but in a way that limits the emergence of progressive and Left leadership and independent actions by grassroots constituencies. . .

"What we need is to revive the vision of what the Rainbow Coalition campaigns of 1984 and 1988 could have become. A multiracial, multiclass political movement with strong participation and leadership from racial minorities, labor, women's organization and other left-of-center groups could effectively articulate important interests and concerns of the most marginalized and oppressed sectors of society. It would certainly push the boundaries of political discourse to the left. . ." (Marable, pps. 89-91)

2004 Racism Watch is being established for the explicit purpose of helping broad sectors of the progressive movement get organized and prepared to speak up and take action in opposition to the use of racism during the Presidential and other electoral campaigns this year, and to make issues of racial justice a part of this year's political debate. We hope that 2004 can be the year that we make visible an explicitly multi-cultural network of activists who understand the obligation to confront racism whenever and wherever we find it. We can put those who use racism for divisive and destructive ends on the defensive and help to get better candidates elected, while building for the future.