This week, Powell plunges in. He planned to use an hour long CBS television appearance on Monday in New York to preach racial reconciliation. He was expected to replay a speech last year at Howard University in which he championed black pride and self-help–but also national unity. After New York, he heads to other cities with large black populations–Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta–on the last leg of his tour.
As usual, Powell’s knack for dramatic timing was uncanny. In the White House, President Bill Clinton was caught between the need to honor the emotions of a key constituency– African-Americans–and yet distance himself from Farrakhan’s march. In their first debate in New Hampshire, the Republican candidates basically ignored the Simpson verdict and the march. In theory, these masters of the coded appeal to whites have an intriguing political opportunity. If the GOP could attract white liberals who still believe in integration and blacks who believe in self-help, it could become a true governing coalition. “For us to sustain the role of the majority party we have to be the party of all the people,” says Rep. J. C. Watts, a black Republican from Oklahoma. But that would require a complete– and unlikely– reversal of their recent history.
At Howard last year, Powell warned against racial separation. “Our black heritage must be a foundation stone we can build on,” he told the students, “not a place to withdraw into.” This week he will be speaking during a dramatic display of black America’s burgeoning desire to “withdraw.” Busloads of black males were converging on the Mall in Washington for the Million Man March. The aim, organizers said, was a spectacle of devout “atonement” and vows of fealty to the family, the black community and God.
To many, the event wasn’t about uplift; it was about enmity and division. Organizers excluded whites and women from attending. Farrakhan, the founding father of the march, preaches a brand of separatism that isn’t merely pro-black, but virulently anti-everybody else. Jews, Koreans and others who run businesses in the ghetto are “bloodsuckers,” he told Reuters Television in an interview disclosed last week. America needs racial divorce for “irreconcilable differences,” he said in another pre-march interview. “If we can’t get along in peace, we have to separate.”
A generation ago on the Mall, Martin Luther King Jr. evoked a dream that became an inspiring vision of politics: that one day Americans would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” In some respects, that dream has been realized. In entertainment, advertising, sports and most workplaces, integration is the order of our day. In films, Denzel Washington commands millions for roles that can have nothing to do with skin colon In pop music, Hootie & the Blow-fish is a mixed-race group that sings “white.” A black middle class thrives in the suburbs.
But in politics, the ideal of integration is a spent force. Americans of all colors seem exhausted by the effort to come this far, and embittered by the new brand of race-based obsessions that have developed along the way. Higher incomes haven’t ended blacks’ worries about discrimination, but have instead sharpened them as they battle for advancement in the workplace. Jesse Jackson, who spent a dozen years lauding the Democratic Party as a black route to power, is now far less popular among African-American college students than Farrakhan, says David Bositis, an analyst at the black-oriented Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Respected white intellectuals publish books questioning the biological and cultural equality of the races; a new generation of black writers doubts the value of integration. “We’re so factionalized,” says Watts. “In many respects we’re back to the ’50s.”
Where are the political leaders and institutions to bridge the Great Divide? A generation ago, the Democrats took up the task. The party’s commitment in the ’60s inspired Clinton, who, as a teenager, lovingly recited Dr. King’s speeches. Clinton, too, planned a Monday speech on race. He chose an appropriate site: Austin, Texas, the home of the founder of the Great Society, Lyndon Johnson.
But the Democrats no longer have the strength to unify or lead–even if Clinton manages to win re-election. His party’s solutions–the welfare state, affirmative action-seem powerless to repel the COP assault. Feminists and blacks are at odds over the Simpson verdict. The party’s coalition is crumbling as the few remaining conservative whites leave. Their last commanding Southern figure, Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, retired last week. And though Clinton administration officials steered clear of Farrakhan’s march, influential black Democrats–including Jackson and Rep. Donald Payne, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus–assumed prominent roles.
But the Democrats aren’t really where the action is anymore. The country’s political energy lies with the Republicans. And ideologically, they may be better positioned to expand their base than Democrats want to admit. Many of the themes of the Million Man March are echoed in Republican rhetoric: family values, self-sufficiency, the power of market economics.
The reward for luring blacks into the COP would be great: not just a temporary, whites-only congressional majority, but the kind of ruling coalition that the Democrats put together under Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. “If Republicans can win a quarter of the black vote,” says Bositis, “then the Democrats are dead.”
Having won over most conservative whites, Republicans would seem to be free to reach out. In Iowa and New Hampshire–places with minuscule black populations–racial issues are so much distant thunder. That’s why last week the 10 COP contenders could ignore the verdict and Farrakhan’s march.
But habits and history are hard to overcome. The GOP would have to abandon the “wedge” politics they’ve relied upon for a generation to separate whites from the Democratic Party. Pace hasn’t been the only wedge–taxes, abortion, crime and foreign policy are others. But race has been perhaps the sharpest instrument. When LBJ and the Democrats enacted landmark civil-rights legislation in 1964, Southern whites began their exodus. Richard Nixon created minority “set-asides” for black businesses–a race-conscious policy the GOP now denounces–but he also pursued a “Southern strategy” to woo whites with racial themes. Under Lee Atwater’s tutelage, George Bush conjured up Willie Horton.
Republicans like Jack Kemp have long made the expand-the-base argument–and have been ignored. It’s not clear anyone will listen now. In later primary states, such as New York, California and in the South, GOP contenders may be tempted to use the old wedges in new ways. Pat Buchanan, with his preternatural feel for cutting issues, has spotted the next one: “reform” of the courts. Months ago his campaign produced a radio spot calling for term limits on judges. After the heat of this Simpson moment fades, Buchanan told NEWSWEEK, he plans to push proposals that are already hot in California abolishing the requirement for unanimous jury. verdicts. relaxing restrictions on the use of evidence in court. staging judge-only trials.
Nor are Republicans likely to be able to resist the temptation to use the Million Man March itself as a wedge. They aren’t saying so now. but GOP strategists privately chortle at the prospect of highlighting the Democratic Farrakhan supporters who will surely be in evidence at next summer’s Democratic convention in Chicago–outside the hall, if not in it. “Louis Farrakhan isn’t going to disappear. which is just fine with me.” said one GOP operative.
And what about Powell? The racially charged atmosphere makes seeking the GOP nomination more urgent, perhaps, but also more difficult. GOP primary voters who might once have overlooked Powell’s race may not be inclined to do so. His initial remarks on the verdict and the march were too timid, complained William Bennett. “Saying you’re not going to be at the march because of a book tour just doesn’t cut it.” said Bennett. who has praised Powell in the past. Buchanan. who decried the Simpson verdict as “an injustice and a travesty,” went further. If Powell enters the race as a social liberal. he warned. “there will be an explosion” at the GOP convention.
If the GOP has any chance of reaching out. it may be up to Powell to show the party how. Despite the general’s moderate views, some conservatives, such as columnist Charles Krauthammer, were looking to him in an almost desperate search for a racial bridge builder. Republican voters, judging from the polls, are eager to see him in the campaign. Powell has said he wouldn’t want to run to be a “poster child for the brothers.” But if he believes in an integrated society, he may have no choice.
