The Way I See It
By Joseph C. Phillips

Deaf to Race

For several years now, we have been hearing about the renewed efforts on the part of the Republican Party to bring black voters back into the fold. If the GOP is to be successful in that endeavor, I am of the opinion that they must take every opportunity presented to speak to Black audiences wherever and whenever that opportunity presents itself.

The good news is that an increasing number of Republicans recognize this truth.  Some of those Republicans were on hand last week at the Black issues forum held at Morgan State University. Five of the Republican presidential hopefuls showed up to answer questions of importance to Black voters.  The bad news is that the four Republican front runners begged off citing scheduling conflicts. 

Scheduling conflicts aside, the truth is the front runners declined because it didn’t register a positive factor in their cost benefit analysis.  There is a sense that there is very little opportunity to win votes or raise money at events like these. Politicos call it picking the low hanging fruit and there was plenty of fruit being picked as the four no-shows spent their evenings eating rubber chicken and collecting checks instead of tap dancing on PBS.

There is also a legitimate belief (or more accurately fear) among the GOP front runners that there is a bit of double dealing with forums such as the one at Morgan State.  The forum billed itself as a Black issues forum when in fact it was a Black liberal forum on race.  You don’t have to take my word for it.  In his introduction to the event, Tom Joyner said as much,  “Pretending that racism does not exist only assures us that we'll be revisiting the same issues another 50 years from now...” No matter that no one -- not any serious person in the public eye –has ever implied any such thing. Joyner let us know from the start that the primary issue is race. So the issues forum was being used as a proxy to introduce progressive takes on healthcare, immigration and foreign policy. But this is precisely why if Republicans are ever going to cease being outflanked on issues of race, they must show up and make their case. If conservatives are going to continue to claim that the black vote – indeed the black consciousness – has been high-jacked in order to further the leftist agenda, they must find the courage, as several candidates did, to walk into the lions’ den and offer an alternative message.

Republican candidates may have legitimate concerns with the hosts or sponsors of forums such as the one at Morgan State.  The idea that Tom Joyner, who was one of the hosts, moderator Tavis Smiley, or any number of non hand-picked invitees is torn between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani strains credulity. Short of an old style liberal revival epiphany, there was nothing that any Republican candidate was going to say or do that was going to sway opinion. It may also be true that during the primary, candidates must rally their base and their base is not going to be in the audience at Morgan State.

But what is true today may not be true tomorrow.  The farmer sows his seed for a future harvest.  Some will scoff, true enough.  However, the message and the presence will register with others.

However, lame excuses like scheduling conflicts will merely continue to harden the perception among Black voters that Republicans are deaf to race.  Their absence is viewed as disrespectful and does nothing but further erode the already marginal credibility Republicans have with most of the Black electorate.  This failure to pick up what Black folk are putting down will forever be the primary impediment to any real progress not only in expanding the party of Lincoln, but also more importantly in promoting the conservative philosophy of limited government, natural rights and personal responsibility that many of us believe provide answers to the critical issues of the day.

Send me your ways of seeing it at Josephcp@netlistings.com