black…MYstory

It’s funny that this is a constant in terms of Republican politics — the question of why they can’t win the black vote. The majority of black folks in this country know why — it’s your policies and tactics, stupid! You can’t treat me like dirt, marginalize my views and slander my name and then expect my vote to boot.

Maybe, just maybe, one Republican gets that. Jack Kemp, in writing about the GOP and the Black vote in ‘08, offers some keen insight into what it might really take to get to win the black vote:

“If the Republican Party is really to get into this political battle for every vote, its candidates need to commit themselves to making America truly a land of equal opportunity, a nation of racial and ethnic reconciliation with everyone having access to upward mobility and wealth creation for themselves and their families.

This would shake our body politic to its very core. Just think of a Republican Party standing tall and proud before people of color to pledge an agenda of turbo-charged enterprise zones (aka empowerment zones), educational choice, a fair and flat tax code with payroll taxes totally deductible, access to capital and ownership opportunities for low-income families while pledging to make sure everyone has the right to vote and assuring that every vote will count. This type of pledge can make the Republican Party competitive with the socialistic ideas and paternalistic policies of the leading Democratic candidates.

To the members of the GOP who say we can’t compete with the class warfare rhetoric and the redistribute-the-wealth policies of the left, I say hogwash! After spending 13 years of my professional career in football and 30 years in a political career interfacing with and working alongside people of color, I’m firmly convinced that by far the vast majority of people are not interested in soaking the rich. Instead, they want to get rich - not just in terms of creature comforts but with opportunities for people to prosper educationally and socially, with upward mobility for themselves and their children.”

While I don’t agree with every point, I think Kemp, by and large, gets it. As the saying goes, “we have no permanent friends or permanent enemies, just permanent interests.” If the right wants our vote, they better start addressing our interests in a meaningful way.

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