TO BE EQUAL COLUMN 50 A Letter To The President-Elect By Hugh B. Price President National Urban League Dear Mr. Bush: I have no doubt that you will soon be getting, if you haven't gotten it already, some very bad advice. That advice will be to ignore Black America, to disdain the black electorate. After all, you will be told, they didn't vote for you, and you can't expect them to vote Republican. So, forget it. Make a few high-profile black appointments, mouth some platitudes about "diversity," and let it go at that. Mr. President-elect, taking that advice would be a big mistake. Not only do the people who give that advice have a rather undeveloped sense of what America should be. They don't have political common sense. The past and present "political math," and the probable political future-as it looks at this moment-makes it clear what needless trouble that advice has caused and would continue to cause you and the nation. According to the tabulations of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the Washington-based think tank, a diverse coalition of voters supported Vice President Gore: Latinos, Jews, Asian Americans, gays and women of all races. By far the most supportive were African American voters: 90 percent punched the Gore-Lieberman ticket. As David C. Ruffin notes in the current issue of the Joint Center newsletter, FOCUS, "By all accounts, without Gore's black support, George W. Bush would have won the White House in a landslide, since Gore lost the white vote nationwide. " Ruffin goes on to state that black voters "provided the margin of victory in several states where he lost the white vote, including Pennsylvania ... Illinois ... Michigan ... Wisconsin ... and Maryland ... The exit polls show that Gore narrowly lost the white vote in California but carried the black and Latino votes by 86 percent and 68 percent, respectively. Furthermore, exit polls in other races "indicated that the black vote made the difference in several Democratic Senate wins-Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and New York." Mr. President-elect, such a showing in a primarily two-party system is a stunning record of the cost of one's party neglect of a valuable resource. Let others continue to, whether subtly or openly, denigrate the black electorate. The black voting record in this election, and in the 1998 mid-terms, tells anyone with common sense what the truth has always been: that African Americans, like other Americans, know what their civic duties are and will vigorously participate in the great rite of democracy: voting. And, like other Americans, they give their votes to the Democratic Party in heavy majorities for the same reason women as a group, Hispanic Americans, Jewish Americans and other Americans do: because Democratic officeholders have pushed policies that have boosted their bottom-line well-being and in other ways positively addressed the issues they care about. Redistricting. Predatory Lending. Police Racial Profiling. Economic policies that continue the job and economic gains blacks have enjoyed in the 1990s. The discriminatory treatment blacks and other people of color are subjected to at both the juvenile and adult levels of the criminal justice system. Federal enforcement of measures against housing discrimination and the redlining of communities. Education. Is the Republican Party ready to spar with the Democratic Party on these and other issues of special importance to black Americans? And will the GOP reverse its relentless assault on affirmative action, which has done so much good for African Americans and for America? Will the GOP show that it's serious about attracting black voters by getting black Republican candidates elected to office? Last month, one GOP incumbent, Representative J.C. Watts, of Oklahoma, and twenty-three black Republican challengers across the country ran for House seats. Only Mr. Watts was victorious. That's not a record to inspire confidence in the GOP's commitment to electing black officeholders. Recent Joint Center surveys have consistently shown that 60 percent of blacks describe themselves as either moderate or conservative. That would seem to indicate great potential for Republican gains. But less than 9 percent identify themselves as Republican-because, contrary to the glib patter of some, the large majority of black voters believe it's the Republicans, not the Democrats, who have taken them for granted-by not pursuing them in all the ways political parties pursue voters' favor. What will you do, Mr. President-elect? Will you restructure the GOP's posture toward black voters? The Democrats have played the political game, not perfectly, but well. The Republicans have barely cracked the door to the arena. They're not even on the playing field. Don't get me wrong. The National Urban League is steadfastly nonpartisan. We don't support any party or candidate. What we're after is a true contest between the parties for the black vote. That, after all, is how the political game is played the American way. ####### 50 TBE 12/13/2000 TO BE EQUAL 120 Wall Street, NY, NY 10005