I’m an African-American Woman. Here’s My Advice to Conservatives Wooing
My Community. By Kay Coles James 8/29/16
The moment Donald Trump urged black voters
to consider supporting him—asking, “What do you have to lose?”—the consultants
and pundits sprang into coordinated action, bombarding the airwaves with their
“r” and “b” words. “Donald Trump is a racist,” posted
Daily Kos. “Donald Trump is a bigot,” piped in The New York Times’ Charles
Blow.
There’s a method to this madness, of
course. Call someone a racist and they’ll no longer be heard. They’ve been
accused of racism, after all, so they’re not just contemptible, they’re outside
the realm of public discourse. That’s why the noise makers are so busily at
work. While all of this
strikes many voters as manipulative and even childish, what really troubles me
is what it masks: the pain my community is suffering right now.
Everywhere I look, I see problems
that cry out to be solved. African-American poverty should be going
down—instead, it’s rising. Our children should be thriving—instead, millions of
them live in broken homes. Our streets should be peaceful—instead, violence
continues to take a devastating toll. Our schools should be nurturing
excellence—instead, far too many of them are factories of failure. Our
community is reeling under the impact of unceasing assault. And our future
should be brighter—instead, we have less and less reason for hope.
In short, our community is reeling
under the impact of unceasing assault. Despite all this, we remain a proud
people. We’ve suffered horribly over the centuries, and yet we survive. Our
traditions have largely endured. For the most part, our churches remain intact.
And our babies are born with all the intelligence, creativity, energy, and
possibility that God grants to every child.
But that’s where our path veers off
course. Our children grow up sicker, poorer, less well-educated, and at greater
risk than other American children. Our families, once boasting more marriages
and two-parent households than whites, are now battered by single parenthood,
unemployment, and poverty. And our community, once the self-sustaining citadel
that enabled us to survive slavery and institutional racism, is now teetering
on the brink of destruction.
I recently conducted a detailed
analysis of how we are faring, and what I found shocked me. On issue after
issue, the numbers are heart-wrenching.
Take education, for example. In
1961, I was one of the first black students in my hometown of Richmond,
Virginia, to integrate a whites-only public school. Decades after institutional
segregation was outlawed, however, separate and unequal schools remain.
According to the National Assessment
of Educational Progress, schools serving majority-minority communities have the
worst performance, the largest achievement gaps, the highest crime rates, and
the least experienced teachers. Shockingly, the average high school graduation
rate among black students in many of America’s largest cities is less than 50
percent. Less than 50 percent! And in cities like Detroit, more than nine in 10
black students can’t even read or do math at grade level.
It wasn’t always this way. Having
been denied schooling during their enslavement, emancipated blacks embraced
education as the ticket to freedom and equality. Then came historically black
colleges and universities (including my alma mater, Hampton University), and
African-Americans began to advance at every level of scholarship.
All that began to change under the
weight of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” programs, as
high-performing neighborhood schools gave way to bureaucracy-choked failure
factories. Today, grim statistics and generations of wasted talent are the
legacy of an agenda that has failed our children and community.
That’s why I say what’s really
important here isn’t the political noise, but the personal tragedies it is
masking. Scores of well-paid consultants and
media personalities are on the air, seemingly debating race. But their focus
isn’t really on community renewal—it’s on full-combat politics. As a result,
they gleefully throw around words like “racist” and “bigot” without pausing to
truly, honestly consider the plight of the minority community they purport to
defend. And when they’re done, they’ll put another notch in their professional
belt and move on to the next campaign or news show while African-Americans
continue to suffer.
That’s just not acceptable, not at
all. It’s not OK that black kids aren’t getting the very best education
possible. It’s not OK that black adults are out of work and unable to pursue
their dreams. It’s not OK that black families are homeless. It’s not OK that
black seniors live in fear for what tomorrow may bring. And it’s not OK that so
many consultants and pundits would rather play politics than help save my
people.
Fortunately, many others genuinely
care about economic advancement and social justice for all Americans. They
recognize we need to start over. Some now call the Republican Party home
because they recognize conservative policies offer the commonsense solutions my
community needs. Others try to encourage the Democratic Party to adopt more
effective conservative policy solutions. Having said that, I need to make
clear that this is not a battle that can be won by a political party on its
own—it depends on building strong support within the African-American
community, where many of us are already working to achieve community renewal.
Winning this battle, then, will
depend on political parties and conservatives getting it together and getting
it right. As for conservatives, this will take focused effort, real trust,
unwavering consistency, and sensitivity to symbols, as well as the powerful
acts of just showing up and listening. Personnel decisions within campaigns,
transitions, and governing will make a big difference too, since having
experienced, politically savvy African-Americans with stature inside those three
dynamics is vital to avoiding unforced errors.
Winning this battle, then, will
depend on political parties and conservatives getting it together and getting
it right. As difficult as the task may seem, I know in my heart it can succeed.
And I know that that success will enable my community to start over and achieve
the progress it so richly deserves.
With leadership, a plan, and
execution, we can get this done. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to solve the
problems that exist beyond the noise.
http://dailysignal.com/2016/08/29/im-an-african-american-woman-heres-my-advice-to-conservatives-wooing-my-community/
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