John RapleyTHE SUNDAY after he was confirmed as US Attorney-General, John Ashcroft attended a black Baptist church in Washington. Given his relationship with the American civil rights movement, Mr. Ashcroft was not exactly a favourite guest. Though received with due hospitality, he nonetheless had to listen to a firm lecture from the pastor on the differences that lingered between Mr. Ashcroft and the black community.
It's a guess as to whether Mr. Ashcroft's decision to attend an all-black church was a sincere gesture at reconciliation by a man who had been accused of racism, or a public relations ploy. But what does seem evident to me is that his gesture formed part of Mr. Bush's steady effort to bring about a quiet revolution.
As things stand, the African-American community in the US votes overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. From the start, the Democrats supported the civil rights movement and provided a much warmer welcome to black politicians than did the Republicans. The latter, by way of contrast, have tended to oppose the civil rights movement and its legacy of federal programmes. Moreover, within the Republican Party, there have remained clear strains of racism. These have made the party a less than welcoming home to most African-Americans with political ambitions.
Nevertheless, the marriage between the African-American community and the Democratic Party has not always been a happy one. The civil rights leadership has tended to be more liberal than its support base when it comes to a wide range of social matters. Moreover, since the successes of the 1960s, much of this leadership has become involved in elite-level politics. On the one hand this has helped produce a black political elite.
On the other hand, it has created a widening gap between leaders and grassroots.
Historically, the African-American community has organised itself for political action through its churches. But in recent years, some pastors and a good many people in the pews have reportedly been growing uncomfortable with this particular use of the church for political ends. Suffice it to say that while they are attached to the legacy of the civil rights movement, the pastors are more conservative than the civil rights leadership. Moreover, community leaders have been disturbed by the unanticipated erosion of many black institutions as a result of integration.
When the walls dividing black and white America fell, many black businesses got absorbed into white-owned ones. Educated African-Americans, whose only avenues for upward mobility lay in black institutions or businesses, now found doors opened at white-owned corporations (even if they often continued to receive a frosty reception). As the black business class broke up, so too did the range of institutions in the inner city that arose from their patronage. Grassroots organisers have been anxious to rebuild these institutions. For many, the solution lies in a return to some form of racial separation and a focus on self-reliance among African-Americans.
This growing conservatism among the black middle class has altered the contours of the political landscape. It is thus no accident that the African-American leader able to draw the biggest crowd to a political rally today is not Jesse Jackson even before his personal difficulties became public - but the much more conservative Louis Farrakhan.
But how to reach this wellspring, largely untapped by the Democratic Party because of its attachment to integration? The answer is again through the churches, where social conservatism is articulated most strongly. Thus, President Bush's decision to shift the provision of federal resources from state agencies, dominated by the civil rights leadership, to churches, via his faith-based initiative, has drawn a warm response from the pastors.
Democrats are understandably anxious. If even a small portion of the African-American community were to switch to the Republican Party, the future electoral difficulties of the Democrats would worsen significantly. But will Mr. Bush pull it off? It's too early to tell. Even if successful, it will be years before the fruits of this campaign ripen to the point they can be picked. But even now, one can detect a few early signs of a thawing in the relations between the Republican Party and the black community. And if things continue in that direction, it will be a momentous, yet quiet, revolution in American politics.
John Rapley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
