A Pointless, Supine Gesture

After giving the National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People (Say, isn't "colored" a derogatory reference to African-Americans? Why doesn't the NAALCP ever get slammed for being racist?) the sustained, well-deserved snubbing it deserved for the past five and a half years, why on Earth did President Bush knuckle under and make the expected, obligatory self-flaggellating pilgrimmage yesterday?

It wasn't only himself that he humiliated, but his entire party as well:

"I understand that racism still lingers in America," Bush told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People....

True; probably every black member of the audience is intensely bigoted against white people. Gosh, I wish he had said that.

Instead, we got (ugh) this:

"It's a lot easier to change a law than to change a human heart. And I understand that many African-Americans distrust my political party."

"And you all need to understand that there is no legitimate reason for your distrust; that your party has spent the past forty years smearing my party with the despicable "racist" label when yours is the party with the racist heritage and which continues to exploit your people while holding them down and back to this very day."

Gosh, I wish he had said that.

That line generated boisterous applause and cheers from the thousands in the audience, which generally gave the President a polite, reserved reception.

Sure it did. The ultimate "whitey" was finally paying his penance, wallowing in phantom collective guilt like all his predecessors, bowing & curtseying and donning the rhetorical "kick me" sign he was issued at the door. "The thousands in attendance" couldn't help but eat it up.

"I consider it a tragedy that the party of Abraham Lincoln let go of its historical ties with the African-American community," Bush said. "For too long, my party wrote off the African-American vote, and many African-Americans wrote off the Republican Party."

Oh, please. "The party of Abraham Lincoln" didn't "let go" of a damned thing. More Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did Democrats, for Chrissakes. Those "historical ties" were ripped away from the GOP by viciously dishonest lib partisans who skewed Barry Goldwater's "nay" vote in the summer of 1964 (during his disastrous presidential bid) on constitutional grounds into the "racist" canard that they still play today.

And, given how thoughtless "black America" has been in swallowing this lie and imbibing the reverse-racism that their "leaders" have pedaled for all these years, particularly manifested in their 90+% vote for "the party of the Confederacy," they bear a measure of responsibility for that rank calumny as well. It is arguable that their vote deserved to be written off by Republicans, especially since they wrote off the GOP first.

That situation is slowly but steadily changing. However, the change is not coming from Pachyderms prostrating themselves before black racist organizations in obscene parodies of pandering atonement, but from making common cause with African-Americans on issues important to them, like education, crime, economic opportunity, and family values. The campaigns of Michael Steele in Maryland and Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania are testament to the progress that the Republican Party and black America are making together. And you'll note that the NAALCP has absolutely nothing to do with it, because racial progress and harmony is not only not in its interest, but would deprive it of its reason to continue existing.

Paul Beston said it well on AmSpecBlog today:

Bush should have stayed away from the NAACP the rest of his term, in the hopes that the organization would either die of neglect or reconstitute itself along constructive ends. Instead, he went to visit a group that has slandered him mercilessly for six years, not even demanding an apology or retraction as a condition for his doing so. In his speech, Bush declared that he wants to “change the relationship” between Republicans and blacks, but the audience made clear that the relationship changing was a one-way street: they cheered the parts they liked and booed the parts they didn’t (his mention of charter schools).

Like many others before him, Bush grants to the NAACP and their ilk the right to make any accusation, however baseless, while the responsibility for proving innocence is his. Sounds like white guilt to me.

And abysmal politics. I expect to be insulted by NAALCPers; I don't expect to see my president crawl to them and beg forgiveness on my behalf for sins I never committed.

Mr. President, the next time you get an urge like this...please, let it go.