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results of the Los Angeles mayoral race have not received much play
in conservative circles. They should.
Staunch liberals like Harold Meyerson, are complaining
that James Hahn defeated Antonio Villaraigosa thanks to "80 percent
support among African-Americans and 79 percent support among Republicans."
Notes Meyerson: "We've seen this lineup just once before in L.A.'s
political history: the 1994 vote on Proposition 187, which saw south-central
districts joining the west Valley to support Pete Wilson's immigrant-bashing
initiative."
As recently as December
of last year, Meyerson believed that blacks and Hispanics would,
"for the first time since 1968," combine as "an emerging Democratic
majority." This emerging majority has run into some difficulties.
In a June 10th New York Times report, aptly titled "Los Angeles
Race Bares Racial Divisions," Crenshaw resident Ruby Taylor says:
"I've been watching what Spanish people [have] been doing, making
black people move out of their houses. And I thought that if that
cat got in, it would just go more that way."
Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, was
similarly blunt in his comments: "Some Latino leaders are feeling
that the reason that [black-white] alliance was made possible was
because blacks were resentful of Latino power. There's a certain
rose-colored-glasses unwillingness to talk about it, but it's there,
and it's real, and I don't know what we do about it for the future."
The Republican party under George W. Bush and Karl Rove seems determined
to win the Hispanic vote by any means necessary. Yet, as the Los
Angeles results demonstrate, outreach to Hispanics as Hispanics
may put the GOP still further behind the eight ball with black voters.
For example, so long as President Bush, in the name of not offending
Hispanic voters, allows Clinton Executive
Order 13166 to remain on the books, he is courting trouble with
black Americans.
As EO 13166 is enforced, black applicants for secure, well-paid
government jobs will lose out to those who speak the languages of
today's immigrants (as is already happening in Oakland
.) In addition, EO 13166 places every black church
that receives any federal money for anything at risk of being sued
for not providing an interpreter for each and every Spanish-speaker
on demand.
Even as the Bush folks push more Spanish-language outreach —
weekly radio addresses in Spanish
and such--it is not clear that such overtures are even reaching
their intended audience.
A survey
for the Gore campaign found that Spanish is the preferred language
at home for just one-third of Hispanic voters. All of George Bush's
campaign efforts in Spanish resulted in 62%
of the Hispanic vote going to — Al Gore. Had it not been for
the Cubans in Miami, disgusted with how the Clinton administration
treated Elian Gonzalez, Gore, not Bush, would be sitting in the
Oval Office.
It is also noteworthy that Bush carried just 5% of black voters
in his state of Texas, half of what he did in nationally. Black
voters might just see special treatment for Hispanics as a rejection
of blacks. And it is here that the danger lies for the future of
our country.
Should our politics become increasingly racially divided, with the
Democrats entrenched as the party of blacks, and the GOP the party
of Hispanics, each U.S. election will become a high-stakes contest
in which only one tribe wins, just like elections in places like
Indonesia or the Balkans.
This was not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. The genius of
the Constitution was that it made it extremely difficult for any
single president or session of Congress to do anything bitterly
opposed by a substantial minority. Thus, no single election would
matter that much and the average citizen need not get overly
upset about who would run the government until the next election.
As the role of government has expanded, the importance of each election
has grown accordingly. But once elections become a referendum over
whose tribe triumphs, each one becomes a desperate battle in which
anything goes, sort of like the 2000 presidential election in Florida,
only squared and cubed.
Instead of seeking the Hispanic vote or the black vote as a bloc,
Republicans would do better to earn the votes of individual blacks
and Hispanics. A determined effort by President Bush to pass school
vouchers, which earn the support of 60% of blacks, would do
the GOP more good politically than would a hundred speeches in Spanish.
We'll celebrate the 225th birthday of America on July 4th. This
nation of immigrants has long been unique as a place where an individual's
achievements matter more than his ancestry. To endanger our national
unity in an effort to win temporary political advantage is to play
not with fire, but with nitroglycerin.
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