GOP shouldn’t ridicule Obama

The Republican Party still does not get it when it comes to race.

The latest episode occurred when Chip Saltsman, a contender for chairman of the Republican Party, sent out a racially charged parody as his holiday greeting. The parody, “Barack, the Magic Negro,” is a music video sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

If Saltsman did not see the problems with the video, he obviously has some racial issues of his own to address.

Yet, the larger issue beyond Saltsman’s transgression is the Republican Party and its history of being on the wrong side on race.

Ever since the 1960’s, the Republican Party has drifted further and further into racial isolation.

In 1964, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the GOP nominee for President, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This marked a watershed moment for the GOP. Then and there, the GOP set its course by appealing to the racial fears and frustrations of whites. It didn’t care that it was alienating black voters.

In 1968, Richard Nixon exploited the issue of race with his famous “Southern strategy.” He appealed to white Southern voters on such issues as desegregation and busing , and it worked for him.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for president in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the city where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. The message Reagan sent was obvious: Bigots are welcome in the GOP.

In 1988, George Bush used the strategy with his racist Willie Horton ads that again played to the unfounded racial fears of poor and working class whites. The tactic helped Bush win the election.

Other incidents of racial insensitivity occurred involving the GOP over the years.

In 2002, Trent Lott’s naked praise for Strom Thurmond, an arch segregationist and enemy of racial equality going back decades, did not help the party change its image. Lott, who was majority leader of the GOP at the time, was forced to give up that post.

Senator George Allen’s “macaca” remark during the Virginia Senate race of 2004 was another low moment. Once a tape of the incident found its way onto YouTube, Allen was political toast.

As a result of the Republican Party’s strategy and slip ups, blacks cease to have any respect for the GOP at the presidential level.

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore received 90 percent of the black vote, and in 2004, Democrat John Kerry received a similar share.

This past election, however, the racial strategy came back to bite the GOP in even a bigger way.

Barack Obama received 95 percent of the black vote but also over 70 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Given this problem, the Republican Party should be reaching out to minorities, not mocking them.

And it ought to treat Barack Obama, who will be inaugurated as the nation’s first black president in just two weeks, with a modicum of respect, not ridicule.

Otherwise, the Republican Party risks isolating itself in a racial wilderness.

Brian Gilmore, a poet and lawyer, lives in Takoma Park, Md. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org,