Here’s what I said: Black people are a constituency to which Republican candidates trolling for votes ought to pay attention and direct their appeals, just as they would any other group the military, the elderly, or parents of school-age children, for instance.
Now, let me sum up for you the thousand-plus (Did he say thousand-plus? Yes, he did.) e-mails, snail mails and letters to editors that took issue with that point: Black people serve in the military, are among the elderly and are parents of school-age children, aren’t they? So when a politician makes campaign promises to those groups, he’s talking to black people too, isn’t he? Black people are not a separate constituency. Republicans don’t divide people by race and culture.
As my sainted mother would say, “Lord have mercy. Lord, give me strength.”
Actually, if I had a lick of sense, I wouldn’t even be writing this column, wouldn’t contribute yet another chapter to an argument that’s already gone on for too long. Had I the sense God gave a goose, I’d stop pummeling this horse’s corpse and move on.
Problem is, I have this character flaw. I can walk away from any objection but a dumb one. If the logic has holes you could drive a truck through, I cannot rest until I’ve driven that truck.
And this logic? Man, I could lead a convoy.
To begin with, a constituency is a group of voters with common backgrounds and/or concerns. Obviously, there is overlap. An 86-year-old Jewish man might have questions about a candidate’s record on issues affecting the elderly. He might also want to know where the candidate stands on the security of Israel. The one does not invalidate the other. And none of us would be stupid enough to suggest that a candidate who rolled out a prescription drug program had somehow, in the process, also answered questions about the partitioning of Jerusalem.
Similarly, a black soldier, senior, or parent surely has concerns relative to those aspects of her identity. But she also wants to know what the candidate proposes to do about police profiling, housing discrimination, job discrimination, loan discrimination, inferior medical care things that particularly affect her as an African American and that cry out for moral and legislative leadership from government.
And please, spare me that fairy tale about Republicans not dividing the electorate by race and culture. Every politician, Republican or Democrat, spins his pitch to appeal to the constituency he’s chasing. That’s why you don’t seriously compete for votes from South Florida Cubans without discussing Castro and Cuba. You don’t waste your time asking California Hispanics to vote for you unless you address immigration and bilingual education. And if you seek to appeal to conservative whites in South Carolina, you must, as the president-elect did, signal your tolerance of the Confederate flag.
Yet African-American people are wrong to see themselves as a constituency, united around issues important to them? This, to use a word favored by many readers, is “divisive”?
It’d be funny if it weren’t so hypocritical. Laughable if it were not so pathetic.
If you acknowledge that black people are a constituency with legitimate issues, you have to acknowledge the ongoing reality of racism and white privilege. And I suspect it can be painful to acknowledge those things if you’ve been the beneficiary of them your entire life.
Unfortunately, if you don’t acknowledge them, your only alternative is the tortured “logic” of the thousand-plus, twisting and contorting to escape obvious truths.
Such folks are like a man who hops on the interstate when the destination is across the street. He swears he’s trying to get there, but even someone without a lick of sense can see he’s just running away.
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
