One of the Parties Has a Major Race Problem

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Page 7

AFFAIRS OF STATE (Column)

One of the Parties Has a Major Race Problem

By DAVID KLINE

One of the major political parties has a big problem. Too many racists and segregationists are trying to lead the party back to the past, when people were judged primarily by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.

No, it’s not the Republican Party. The GOP may have a public relations problem, thanks in large part to propaganda perpetuated by the left-leaning mainstream media, but in practice the Party of Lincoln has a solid record of supporting equality and diversity.

Consider that Republicans appointed the three most powerful blacks in today’s government: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell. (For those who keep scorecards of such things, the Bush Cabinet also includes a black secretary of education, a Hispanic secretary of housing, an Asian secretary of labor and an Asian Democrat secretary of transportation.)

Republicans also ran a black candidate for president in the 2000 election—Alan Keyes, whose support came mainly from white conservatives—and they recently stripped a senator of his leadership role to punish him for making racially insensitive remarks.

Contrast that record with the current Democratic Party, which is home to former Klansman Sen. Robert Byrd, and which has a branch of racist, divisive members who support discriminating against certain Americans based solely on their skin color.

The racist members of the Democratic Party have even resorted to segregation, with some members of Congress separating themselves from colleagues whose pigmentation doesn’t match theirs. These members formed the Congressional Black Caucus, where they apparently expect separate but better-than-equal treatment.

Last week, the Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus attacked their party’s new House leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, because she decided to select Rep. Bob Matsui of Sacramento for a party fundraising post.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, upbraided Pelosi’s decision and said the fundraising job was “an appointment we really wanted.”

“This decision would have sent a clear message to African-American voters and people in our country that Democrats were rewarding African-Americans for their loyalty to the party,” Cummings said.

Cummings made no mention of Matsui’s qualifications or the qualifications of other candidates for the job, because he doesn’t care about such things. All he cares about is whether the appointee is black. Could there be a more textbook example of racism?

It’s also troubling that Cummings believes Democrats should make ethnically based appointments as a “reward” for votes from those who share the appointee’s heritage. He simply can’t fathom that black voters may have simply been selecting the candidates with an expectation of quality job performance, not symbolic racial paybacks.

President George W. Bush offered a refreshing contrast to Cummings’ racist thinking when he announced Wednesday that his administration is filing a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of University of Michigan students who were discriminated against based on their skin color.

Bush noted that the university’s admissions policy is based on a point system, with some students getting a bonanza of extra points based simply on their ethnicity.

“African-American students and some Hispanic students and Native American students receive 20 points out of a maximum of 150, not because of any academic achievement or life experience, but solely because they are African-American, Hispanic or Native American,” Bush said. “To put this in perspective, a perfect SAT score is worth only 12 points in the Michigan system.”

The president correctly noted that such discrimination by a public university is “divisive, unfair and impossible to square with the Constitution.”

And how did the Democratic Party react to Bush’s defense of students’ civil rights? Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts said Republicans “refuse to take real actions” to help ethnic minorities, and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina issued a one-line falsehood: “President Bush had a chance to show he supports diversity and civil rights, but he failed.”

Fortunately for this country, the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court don’t live in the Democrats’ mixed-up world where supporting colorblind policies makes one a racist and discriminating against certain skin colors makes one a civil rights supporter.

As long as our judges uphold the Constitution and lady justice keeps her blindfold in place, we should be safe from the racist movement within the Democratic Party.

— Capitol News Service