According to the post:
While 44% of all delegates at the DNC were minorities, this was true for only 7% of RNC delegates. In fact, this was one of the whitest RNC conventions in decades, pretty much since Black Americans effectively regained the franchise:
Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago [Link]I find this, sincerely, to be very shocking. The full post can be read here: Left vs. White. (I always find the comments at the bottom extremely interesting).
Any thoughts about this? I think the Republicans' stance on immigration is a huge reason why so many minorities are turned off by the party. I really wish that McCain had the guts to stand behind his comprehensive immigration reform bill, but I guess he's too busy pandering to the conservative right. Can anyone think of any other reasons why minorities seem turned off by the Republicans? Plus, do you think opposition to immigration has anything to do with race?
1 comment:
Why might African Americans not identify with the Republican Party? I’m sure there are several ways to approach the question. Daniel Nasaw, for example, appealed to political history. He wrote:
“[S]urveys show African Americans tend to be culturally conservative and churchgoing, favour state aid to parents who send their children to private and parochial schools, and are sceptical of the social security programme, a signature issue of the Democrats.
"In the face of polls showing [the] African American vote, … black Republicans say that the group is a natural constituency for their party….
"Black Republicans point to the early history of the party. It was founded on opposition to slavery, and President Abraham Lincoln, who led the north to victory in the civil war that ended slavery, was a Republican. The Republican party also led the fight for a series of constitutional amendments granting citizenship to those slaves, while Democrats in the mid 19th century tended to represent racist Southern interests. Martin Luther King was at one point a Republican, and President George Bush appointed two black secretaries of state.
"But in the last sixty years, the Democrats largely usurped the Republicans as the party of civil rights. In 1948, Democratic president Harry Truman desegregated the US military, and in the 1960s Democrat Lyndon Johnson shepherded through landmark civil rights legislation even as he acknowledged it would cost him support among southern whites. African Americans attracted by Johnson's civil rights record then rose within the party and organised the black community for the Democrats.
"Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidates, including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, made appeals to southern whites that were deemed racially tinged. Culturally, the Republican party since the 1960's has seen its base move toward the Southeastern United States, home to the old slave states and to segregation, and the western states where few African Americans live.”
--See Daniel Nasaw, “African Americans Lacking in Republican Delegation”
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/04/
uselections2008.republicans20088)
***My hunch is that there’s more to it than this, but Nasaw offers a good place to start. Several questions come to mind: What role does culture play in all this? Do racial stereotypes affect party politics (i.e., African Americans’ stereotypes about Republicans, as well as white Republicans’ stereotypes about African Americans, etc.)? How have African American Republicans negotiated their party affiliation in light of this racial divide? (See African American Republican Leadership Council (AARLC)(www.aarlc.org)***
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