GOP's New Goal: A Less-White Party
For that, Powell felt a backlash from some of his fellow Republicans that resembled the rebuke some liberals give to criticism of President Barack Obama. Yet Powell offered insight into why, as Harvard assistant public policy professor Leah Wright Rigueur writes, black Republicans on national stage tend to be viewed with "nearly the same disbelief and surprise as ... a unicorn sighting.
Yet, as the title of her new book, "The Loneliness of the Black Conservative: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power," suggests, Rigueur believes black Republicans deserve more respect -- from fellow blacks and fellow Republicans.
Easy to forget how the "Party of Lincoln" used to be a progressive abolitionist party, as popular among African-Americans as the Democrats -- then the party of slavery, the KKK and Jim Crow segregation -- are today.
Hispanic and Asian-American voters followed a similar track, turning away from the GOP so dramatically in 2012 that the nation's changing racial-ethnic demographics threaten the party's future as a national force.
Parties do change and so do their relationships with various factions of voters.
Can relations between the GOP and voters of color change back?
Taking a close look at the long history and diverse beliefs of black Republicans, Rigueur's rigorous research confirms what many other analysts already have detected:
The party's resurrection among voters of color will take many years, if it's going to happen. It most likely will begin as most politics do, at the local level where Republicans tend to score victories as pragmatic problem-solvers, more than as ideological lightning rods.
Successful examples that I have written about in recent decades have included former Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan, former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Rigueur sees three major obstacles to improved minority outreach. One, the divide in political beliefs has widened as the GOP has moved farther right. Two, bad memories of an often hostile history have mounted on both sides since the mid-1960s.
And, three, many minorities view the party's "colorblind" approach as insensitive to their history and lived experiences. That insensitivity, writes Rigueur, is "sorely exacerbated by the fact that Republicans rarely consider race except to use it as an antagonism."
That's the "dark vein" that Powell was talking about.
The GOP does not have to "become" Democrats to win black votes, Rigueur suggests. It only has to offer a broad-based message that takes the views of conservatism and minorities into account without pitting them against one another.
Right. Abraham Lincoln, another great Republican, tried that, but couldn't prevent the Civil War. I hope we Americans have learned better from our past mistakes.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
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