Republicans and the race card

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
NNPA Columnist

I would like you to do me a favor. We all know Republicans. In fact, you may be a Republican. So, here is my request. The next time you have a discussion with a Republican friend of yours — or if you are a Republican — ask them a question for me: Why do the Republicans keep falling back on the race card in challenging President Obama?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that the president should not be criticized. In fact, regularly criticize his policies in my commentaries. No, I am talking about something very different. I am asking, why do Repub­lican-aligned groups regularly play the race card? Or, perhaps I should go further and ask, even when they do not play the race card, why are they all too often silent when the race card gets played?

Let’s take a look at the birther movement, the movement that has suggested that President Obama was not born in the U.S.A. While it is true that we have not heard very much from them recently, I was absolutely amazed at how the Republican Party handled that issue. There was either silence or, worse, several of the GOP presidential candidates suggested that they believed that to be the case. The birther movement has nothing to do with the location of Obama’s birth, but it has everything to do with a segment of the white population that feels that a Black person, born anywhere on this planet (regardless of parentage) should be ineligible to be president.

Voter suppression is another issue. Though President Obama’s name is not featured in the the wave of Republican-backed efforts to suppress the vote, everyone with an IQ of more than 10 knows that the objective is to suppress the pro-Obama vote. While this suppression is being done in the name of fighting voter fraud, the perpetrators of this charade cannot demonstrate any significant voter fraud that needs to be addressed. Yet their antics are clearly being aimed at making it that much more difficult for the Democratic electorate, including but not limited to African Americans, to get out to vote. Ask your friend — or ask yourself — why would the Republican Party have an interest in a declining electorate and making it more difficult for Black people to vote?

Then we come to the discussions among the so-called SuperPACs, these monstrosities that have been formed, as a result of the Supreme Court’s go-ahead in the Citizens United case that permits massive expenditures in elections that focuses on white fear. To borrow from the old album by the group Public Enemy, these Republicans are playing on the white fear of a “Black planet.” Now, while it is true that at least some people in the Republican political establishment have finally suggested that this might not be a good course of action, why is it that on the Republican side of the aisle such crack-pot, racist ideas are regularly floated?

To be honest, I am tired of running across Black Republicans who, for whatever reason, would rather ignore such shenanigans and pretend that those tactics don’t really have to do with race and don’t really speak to how the Republican Party views its small African-American constituency, including them.

They should be ashamed.

This article was originally published in the June 4, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper