An interesting trend is taking place right under the Democrats' noses. The party that was once Lincoln's is slowly but steadily stealing the Black vote from them. It is true that the Republican Party has had many Black members who have been totally unresponsive to the Black community, but now they are building a Black leadership portfolio that is conservative and acceptable to the Black majority.

The Ward Connerlys, the Shelby Steeles, etc., were Black types who sold themselves for the White conservative dollars and adoration. This constituted politics for economic reasons, and those Black types took on Republican politics with a repulsive vengeance. But by doing so, they alienated the Black community from the Republicans more strongly than anything else could have. Even today, ten years after his appointment, Justice Clarence Thomas is not generally accepted by most Blacks--observe how few invitations he has at Black institutions and functions.

But the more thoughtful Republicans have begun to tone down the hate-coded rhetoric of their Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms types and have begun recruiting Black politicians who maintain their racial identity, while appealing to the White base of the Republican Party--enter Colin Powell, J.C. Watts, Condoleezza Rice, and others. 

The majority of Blacks have always been morally conservative; so political conservatism itself has never been a problem for the Black community. The majority of Blacks have always believed in excellence; so competence has never been an issue. What has always been an issue among Black voters is the racism in all its coded and disguised forms that has been so prevalent in the Republican Party for so long. Black people have been concerned about compromised, White-made "leaders" who have been presented to the Black community; Black people will pick or accept their own leaders, instead of leaders chosen for them. A McWhorter, Shelby Steele, Ward Connerly, or a Clarence Thomas, (etc.,) will never be a leader in the Black community. The Black community sees them  as compromised figures who are little more than political mercenaries or water boys for a narrow group of White conservatives who long for past realities.

More thoughtful Republicans (after looking at the new demographics, no doubt,) are beginning to understand two things: they need the Black and minority vote to win, and the type of Black leadership they have been generating is unacceptable to the Black community and offers them no Black voter base.

Lee Atwater, former President Bush's political campaign manager, said before he died that he regretted the Willie Horton ad campaign as one of the major regrets in his life. Yes, it used somewhat coded terms, but he knew they were playing to the racist elements of the White society. He admitted it, and he deeply regretted it. That was Republicanism as Black Americans have known it.

Many of the White conservatives who pushed Clarence Thomas through to the Supreme Court will, we hope, at some point before death, admit that their push of Thomas was an injustice to the Black community, and it was their attempt to hoist upon the Black community a White-developed and slanted leader. Of course, a White-developed Black leader is always a less than competent leader. Thomas seems intellectually out of place on the Supreme Court, while there were so many other very qualified Blacks who could have been placed on the Supreme Court without being intellectually out of place at all.

But the smart money in the Republican Party has gotten serious about Black leadership, after realizing that their developed Black leadership lacked several important ingredients that are necessary for acceptance in the Black community. Black leaders have to be leaders who will not give the Black community models of excellence that transform their community into a White community--the McWhorter suggested method; they have to be leaders of competence--Thomas is an embarrassment to most of the intellectual Black community; they have to be leaders who care about the community; they have to be leaders the community can take pride in; and they have to be leaders who do not seem to be water boys/girls for the White community, but their own persons.

The new Black Republican Party leadership, by and large, is a leadership Blacks can accept because they meet the above criteria. There are a few  doubtful ones, but those who are the most visible are individuals who are accepted by the Black community and popular in the White community.

What this means for the Democrats, who have held the Black vote as a block for many years, is that Black voters are being attracted to return to the party of Lincoln in a way that is more positive than has been observed since Lincoln's time.  And this pull that Republicans are exerting in the intellectual Black community will work its way through the mainstream of the Black community.

Colin Powell is the most powerful Black politician the Republicans have. He poses a serious threat to the Democratic Party's Black  base. As Secretary of State, and as a man of his own Black counsel, he is accepted and loved by the Black community. He seems to be in the process of grooming for a Republican Presidency. But were Powell to run for President in the next four years, or possibly Vice President, this would drain the Democrats' Black voter base, unless, as a second on the ticket, there would be a White using racial coded language which the community understands all too well. If that were the case, the community would take a second look at Powell, and the Republicans would split the Black vote. But were they to run Powell, and let Powell be Powell, the Democrats would lose the vast majority of the Black vote back to the party of Lincoln.

If that Black vote goes back to the Republican Party because of a Colin Powell presidency, as it surely would, were such a presidency to occur, it would be a Democratic nightmare. Surely, some smart money Democrat has seen this nightmare scenario by now. Yet one wonders why there is no Democratic strategy in place for countering this swing to the right by the Black vote. []

Frank A. Jones
4/30/01