Republican Party leaves no doubt that it has little to no interest in appealing to African-Americans

By Harold Jackson

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Sixteen years ago I wrote a column headlined “Black voters warm to GOP,” which asked, “Could it be the Republicans have finally gotten it right?” I was referring to voter registration data that indicated the party of Lincoln was finally making notable progress in returning African-Americans to its fold. But as the saying goes, “That was then, this is now.”

Research by the Joint Center for Political Studies showed the percentage of African-Americans identifying themselves as Democrats dropped from 74 percent to 63 percent between the 2000 and 2004 elections, while those claiming to be Republicans rose from 4 percent to 10 percent. That shift was evident in George W. Bush’s corralling 11 percent of the black vote in his 2004 re-election bid. In Ohio, the black vote for Bush rose to 16 percent from 8 percent in 2000.

Hurricane Katrina

That wasn’t by accident. Bush made a concerted effort to reach out to African-Americans and evangelical Christians at the same time by appealing to black ministers across America. But Bush’s efforts didn’t repair the damage to the party caused by his poor response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, whose victims were overwhelmingly black.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is unlikely to get anywhere close to Bush’s numbers. A Quinnipiac poll shows Trump with only 1 percent black support nationally. He does better in an NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll, with 6 percent of the black vote nationally, but zero black support in Ohio and Pennsylvania, two states crucial to any presidential nominee.

Apparently, those polls didn’t concern the Republican revelers who crowned Trump at this week’s convention in Cleveland, where only an estimated 18 African-Americans were among the 2,472 delegates. By nominating Trump, who hemmed and hawed this year before finally disavowing the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, the party signaled its belief that the race-baiting Southern strategy birthed by Richard Nixon can again carry it to victory.

There have been other signs that the GOP no longer feels it is important to be inclusive, including the departure this year of four African-American staffers at the Republican National Committee – Tara Wall, Orlando Watson, Raffi Williams, and Kristal Quarker Hartsfield – who were hired to reach out to black voters.

Grassroots operatives

Two of the positions have been filled, by Lucas Boyce and Telly Lovelace, but some observers believe their jobs will only last as long as Reince Priebus remains RNC chairman, and he has said he won’t run for the post again next year. The herculean task before Boyce and Lovelace is too much for two people. To make a difference, the party would need grassroots operatives in each state.

That also was the observation of the Growth Opportunity Project study, commissioned by the RNC after the 2012 election, which concluded that the party “must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African-American community year-round, based on mutual respect with a spirit of caring.” The study dubbed the “autopsy” made 10 recommendations to build the GOP’s black base, including:

Hire African-American communications and political directors for key states and communities.

Establish a presence within black organizations such as the NAACP.

Recruit and support African-American Republican candidates for office.

Engage historically black colleges and universities to discuss Republican ideals and history.

Little if any of that actually happened, which led Sean Jackson, head of the Republican Black Caucus of Florida to tell Newsweek’s The Daily Beast website, “The RNC does not have a vested interest in black America. It has been part of the norm – normal culture – for so many years, of not engaging the black community, that that engagement continues to be nonexistent.”

Latino Americans

That appears unlikely to change with Trump, who with his antipathy toward worthwhile immigration reform has similarly shown little regard for past Republican efforts to cultivate more support among Latino Americans. It’s doubtful, too, that many Muslim voters will feel warm and fuzzy about Trump, who has made disparaging remarks about their holy book, the Quran.

I get tired of hearing Republicans accuse African-Americans of blindly clinging to the Democratic Party without considering why that might seem to be the case. It’s not just that their party only pays lip service to adding more African-Americans to its ranks. On the issues most important to black voters – income disparity, public education, fair justice, access to health care – the GOP is out of step.

And Trump seems uninterested in doing better.

Harold Jackson is the editorial page editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.