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Much ado was made over President George W. Bush’s first appearance at the national convention of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), after declining to speak for five consecutive years. Bush called his “appearance” a “moment of opportunity.”
For the NAACP, it was a moment of lost opportunity (one of several over the past 25 years). Did the NAACP expect some major revelation from a president that has essentially ignored the civil rights agenda all of his administration? If they did, they are more colored than they were in the 1980s when the agenda was single-handedly dismantled by the Reagan administration. It was no big deal that he “boycotted” the nation’s oldest civil rights group for five years, because he would’ve had nothing to say.
After the grand fanfare that the “President was coming, the President was coming,” Bush still didn’t have nothing to say. If the NAACP and the civil rights community think Bush’s appearance at the NAACP was about a new opportunity to partner on some meaningful civil rights agenda, then I have another war to sell you.
The President’s appearance wasn’t about making up for Hurricane Katrina, nor was it about grandstanding on the extension of the Voting Act debate. It was about recognizing that he has alienated most of his party’s key constituents on the stem cell veto, on the war, in turning a blind eye on Israel’s full scale assault on Lebanon (for kidnapping two soldiers), causing him to take a page of the Democratic Party playbook and turn to the one constituency base that could cause the most damage in the mid-term elections in November. As in every election, Black America will be the swing vote that determines whether the Republican keep their majority in Congress. Remember, the Republican Party almost doubled their “black vote” from the 2000 to the 2004 elections. The “black vote” is a “growth stock” for the GOP. Bush came to water his growth stock.
That’s what the appearance was about—that and deflecting attention away from the United States condoning the escalation of conflict in the Middle East. It’s pretty ironic that at the same time Bush was addressing the NAACP, United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, was speaking to a full session of the U.N. calling for Israel to stop the bombing of Lebanon and for the United States to play a leading role in making that happen. The NAACP’s “generation gap” was again made public when its “young radicals” shouted for the President to address Middle East situation. Of course they were escorted out. Reminds me of almost 20 years ago, when I was a young NAACP branch president at the 1988 NAACP Convention when we booed the appearance of Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen the week after he left Jesse Jackson off the presidential ticket. In the middle of Dukakis’ speech, the Executive Director, Ben Hooks, grabbed the mike and said that we were “agents” trying to embarrass the NAACP. No, the NAACP does a pretty job of that by itself. More painful than watching the President give the NAACP a history lesson on slavery—filled with miscalculations (slavery in America was more than 100 years and legal segregation was only 68 years—mostly in the 20th Century), rhetoric and some sentimentality that bordered insulting with the invoking of King, Lincoln, and Johnson (Lyndon), was watching the NAACP allow the President to ignore the war in Iraq, the Israel-Lebanon conflict, the economy and rising gas prices, and of course, poverty and the urban crisis—which were the conditions that made Katrina such an overwhelming circumstance. NAACP President, Bruce Gordon, graded Bush’s speech as a B. What speech was he listening to? Seems like the organization’s handkerchief is still wrapped a little too tight when the President can just show up, say nothing and still get a passing grade. Probably what President Bush used to do at Yale too. You can tell every time he opens his mouth. Seems like the NAACP was more enamored with the appearance than the substance. Bush, on the other hand, said he hoped the NAACP would look at his actions, not his words. Well, that doesn’t leave the NAACP with much of a choice, does it? Particularly, since both Bush’s actions and words on civil rights have been empty. A continuing dialogue has been assigned to Karl Rove [sic] to set up. That ought to make the NAACP, Urban League, Rev. Jackson and Al Sharpton and the rest of the civil rights community blink twice. Rove is the White House’s stonewall. Take that.
Bush did make to noteworthy acknowledgments; one, that racism still exists (what a revelation for a party that practices “colorblindness” as a platform staple) and that for too long Republicans have written off the African American vote. It was coincidence that Blacks left the party in masse after Republicans courted the Democratic Party’s “Dixiecrats” after they left the Democratic Party when Johnson signed Civil Rights legislation in 1964, 1965 and 1968. Nixon’s “southern strategy” of racial codification and stonewalling civil rights was perfected by Reagan in 1980 and enlarged by George H.W. Bush in 1988. By the time George W. took office in 2000, he didn’t even have to worry about a civil rights agenda. Still don’t, except that he’s trying to save the party in the 2006 mid-term elections and in the 2008 presidential elections. And as always, the black vote is poised to make a difference. Bush is a politician first—not a very good one—not very diplomatic—but good enough to know how to work the press and spin issues. The extension of the Voting Rights act another 25 years was an issue the NAACP should have mandated the extension be permanent. Another missed opportunity. But again, that wasn’t what the appearance was about.
Watching both the President and the NAACP “play nice” when there are so many issues facing Black America was a mind-boggling exercise. But for Bush, it wasn’t about civil rights…
Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum (www.urbanissuesforum.com) and author of 50 Years After Brown: The State of Black Equality In America. He can be reached at www.AnthonySamad.com