Romney’s speech ends the age of “africanamerican” self-entitlement

Well “africanamericans” should be quite happy with the latest development in the fabled “Black community”. GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has just in effect, led the GOP in doing as much for the so-called africanamerican community, as any Democrat, Black President has ever done.  Just by showing up, something President “Campaign Mode” won’t dare do in an election year; Romney managed to save the legitimacy of the NAACP from the effects of its own Race-based rhetoric, and de-centralized wacky behavior, for six more months of existence.  Not since George W. Bush’s last appearance did such a prominent person save the organization’s chance to be seen as a legitimate civic organization that promotes education, freedom, and justice for all – not just a rhetorical battering ram for Black Social Justice.  Despite their public admonishments of his administration for everything they could think of, Bush spoke at the convention heroically, while others had declined under similar circumstances.  By inviting Mitt, the convention of “colored people” can now go on to do what they do best – self-congratulate in back-slapping ceremonies to celebrate surviving another year of mediocrity.
As for the speech itself, Romney ran down his agenda as he will do another 400 times during the rest of this political season – nothing real special there.  But what was remarkable, was that in running down that agenda, not once did Mr. Romney tailor the speech, the agenda, the rate, cadence or pitch of the delivery of that speech in order to patronize  the descendents of slaves.  In comparison to other candidates in the same position when coming to the storied NAACP – sometimes hat-in-hand, that wasn’t always the case.  A compassionate George W. Bush empathized with the misfortunes of “africanamericans” during his 2000 address to the Association.  At one point in Bush’s speech he said, “…and I will confront another form of bias: the soft bigotry of low expectations”.  “43” then went on to address some supposed africanamerican-specific sentiments by invoking, Black, 1950s baseball great, Jackie Robinson; Slavery and Lincoln; Jim Crow, the “Littlerock Nine” and the special limitations put upon Blacks in America – unintentional soft bigotry to go there?  Maybe.  To be fair, Mr. Bush’s speech had substance too.  It foreshadowed some of his well-meaning, domestic policies that are now household names, like No Child Left Behind, and widespread homeowner’s loans for the more disadvantaged (using section 8 benefits to pay house notes).  However compassionate his speech, Mr. Bush’s approach would have been better served to treat so-called africanamerican challenges as only sociological American challenges.  To be clear,  trials experienced by Blacks in America, though never forgotten, can’t be an excuse for failing citizenship, particularly with post-civil rights era, set-asides under affirmative action. Any American leader must make this a centerpiece in his or her relationship with the mythical Black Community.
Poor ol’ loser-winner-loser, John McCain’s address to the NAACP, during his 2008 presidential run was fraught with pandering phrases.  Of the 38 minutes it took to deliver it; a full one third of the speech was incessant sucking up to Black misfortune.  After the first 2:00 minutes he was reaching back for Booker T. Washington’s treatment by Whites in America, despite being an advisor of the Roosevelt administration.  At 5:00 minutes it was the institutionally discriminatory obstacles of africanamerican business ownership.  At the halfway mark he was babbling his way through the obligatory Civil Rights mentions of panderers everywhere.
Unsurprisingly, members of the party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass are not the most egregious offenders of pandering to Blacks; particularly given the history of real civil rights sponsorship since its 1854 inception.  Democrats have used, abused, and then patronized Blacks and the NAACP in their role as community agent.  Hillary Clinton has delivered more than one pathetic speech to the organization during her career.  As candidate in 2007, Clinton couldn’t resist going back to the Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama in the early 1960s for inspiration; or to the early Freedom Riders at lunch counters across the segregated south to make a connection. This was still not her worst performance; in her 2006 speech, she painted an image of the Republican led House of Representatives as a slave plantation, for its attempts to save the middle class, while leaving poor helpless Blacks behind.  Clinton has been worse still. As a suburban elite, Wellesley college/Yale Law educated White woman, she has been known to go into Black churches and quote old Negro spirituals using a tortured Black dialect – Yuk!  But I digress; this is about pandering directly to the NAACP, not Democrats’ evil patronization.
Obama himself addressed the NAACP in 2009, on the organization’s Centennial, while we as a country still hoped for a post-racial President who would seal the breach.  You know the rest of that story.  Although there were hopeful moments, what Obama delivered was a speech in a fake Black dialect (only when he wanted to use it) as Biden pointed out sometime earlier in the 2008 campaign. It was filled with what we know now, are fake shared experiences of so-called “Black life” with a strict mother concerned that her child was to be successful, despite the challenges of an unfair society.  By contrast, the 2007 speech he delivered the year before as a U.S. Senator, Obama was auditioning to be President.  In that fiery speech, he talked about Black responsibility in the mode of Dr. King for the three plus minutes he was given.  For those remarks, he received a standing ovation for not patronizing Black people.  The guy who gave that speech was not the Socialist of today, or at least he hid it in that speech.  Interestingly, Obama has not appeared again; sending Michelle in 2010, video-taping a two minute message from the Oval office in 2011, and then sending gaffer-Joe-Biden this week – what joke.
Romney does not fail in the same way as others. What Romney’s delivery says to africanamericans and the NAACP is that your issues are not special, and I am not going to treat you special.  I have a detailed plan to get this wagon back on its wheels, and you are included as Americans not africanamericans – either you climb on board or you don’t,  but there is no special treatment for what you mistakenly view as special africanamerican issues.  Romney’s unspoken, and little noticed attitude is just what this country needs, leadership, but at every level, not just President.  Rather than patronize, Romney hit it out of the park with truths not often considered nor spoken in “mixed” company.  He cited a favorite examination of the Brookings institute:
“… for those who graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and wait until 21 before they marry and then have their first child, the probability of being poor is two percent. And if those factors are absent, the probability of being poor is 76 percent.
Romney quoted statistics:  “Black children are nationally 17% of students, but 42% in the worst-performing schools”.
He didn’t run from his core beliefs or message but put them at the heart of the speech.  He then continued steadily with his five point plan for getting America back on track: “ open up energy, expand trade, cut the growth of government, focus on better educating tomorrow’s workers today, and restore economic freedom – and jobs will come back to America, and wages will rise again.
 Nothing about new entitlements and set-asides for “the poor”, a term used interchangeably with the term, “Black community”.  He only offered what has proven to work – FREE MARKETS and opportunity.  He closed confidently and presidentially with: “…If I am president, job one for me will be creating jobs. I have no hidden agenda. If you want a president who will make things better in the African American community, you are looking at him”.
Romney’s words were so nearly poignant that even Rush Limbaugh got it wrong by positing that Romney was playing to a larger audience outside the convention – he wasn’t!  This was a last call to join a community, a state, and national movement of people who are equally invested.  It was a final chance for africanamericans to buy into an American Agenda with Romney as President for the next generation.  There wasn’t the usual pandering, modulating, and searching for a common frame of reference that comes with “soft bigotry”.  Any individual or group who can’t put pettiness aside and get on board, including the so-called African American community, is a 13% segment of this society which we just don’t need.


Darryl