Hijacking The Black Vote THE 2004 ELECTION & THE BLACK CHURCH TWENTY-NINE “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; 12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13 Till we all come in F10 the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: 14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; 15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:.” —Ephesians 4:11-15 |
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Among likely Bush voters are two close friends of mine. Black men. Ministers. Career military men with more then twenty years apiece of duty in the U.S. Army. Neither of them like the president. Neither of them think Bush has been a particularly good president. But, tomorrow, they and millions of men like them will vote to re-elect him. “I'm not a Bush fan but I think Kerry is such a liar, I just can't bring myself to vote for him,” one told me. “And I never know where he stands. Every time I think I understand him, he switches positions again, and I'm lost.” “I agree with president on gay marriage,” the other friend told me. “Bush is right on social issues, on moral values. I really don't know what I'm going to do.” I could probably talk to these men, close friends, until I am blue in the face and it wouldn't make any difference. The Republicans have gotten their message out. Both men are reciting, line for line, the Republican party line while not having a whole lot of information about who John Kerry is and what he actually stands for. And I have to blame John Kerry for that. Blaming George Bush for the 2000 election has been convenient fun for Democrats, especially black democrats. but the truth is, Al Gore's biggest problem was Al Gore. And John Kerry's major impediment in this trace has been John Kerry. He has not communicated well. He greatly underestimated how low the president's campaign would stoop (and they'll stoop pretty low). He has not adequately distinguished himself or his record from the president's. And, although I believe he has corrected most of those faults in the ninth hour, John Kerry and his team still speak in elitist Northerner tones while the president, like him or not, speaks with an inarticulate eloquence we used to call Straight Talk. Never mind that the president is lying most every time his lips are moving, my point here is about the power of communication, not necessarily the content. We know what Bush is saying, while we are guessing about Kerry, who is running on a platform of I Am Not George Bush. And the senator seems startled that that fact, in and of itself, is not sufficient to win him the White House. A lot of black Christians, obsessed with gay marriage and abortion rights, will be voting for the president, who all but wrote off the black vote when he snubbed the NAACP earlier this year and with whom most black Americans are dissatisfied. Many black Christians are, ironically, following an agenda white Christian conservatives have set. Most black religious voters know almost nothing about John Kerry but know the president is against abortion and gay marriage, the only two issues the religious right seem to care anything about. It's an unexpected bonus for the Republicans: black votes by default. Black votes that come their way simply because the Democrats have taken blacks in general— and black conservative Christians in specific— for granted. It is a mistake from which the DNC may not recover. Most black religious voters know almost nothing about John Kerry and are asking almost nothing about John Kerry. It's like we want the information to flow to us; we want the senator to do a better job of pursuing us. And that thought may actually be correct. It's entirely possible the senator has taken the black vote for granted, fairly assuming blacks will vote in large measure for the Democrat, so why reach out to us? It may be a fatal miscalculation. The poll numbers we are inundated with, week after week, are, like IQ and SAT tests, biased towards the white middle class, which is near universally considered the bench mark. I have never met a black person who has EVER been polled for election results Though, of course, black people have been and are being polled, my instinct tells me the numbers we see, the Likely and Register Voter Polls, are 80-90% white middle class. Black folk change their phone numbers. Black folk hang up on computers and telemarketers and bill collectors. Black folk don't like their privacy invaded. There's been little or no poll work done in the black church community here in town— at least not that I or any of my dozen or so minister friends are aware of. Perhaps the pollsters think they know what we are going to do. But they'll be quite surprised to find many of us voting for the president— a man most of us disapprove of and most of us have been harmed by— simply because the commonly accepted beliefs about Senator John Kerry is the information being promulgated by the National Republican Committee. We do not ask questions. We do not, statistically speaking, go online as much as whites. We do not seek out information. We wait for it to fly thru the air and hit us through television commercials and print ads. In the black community here, I am hearing an awful lot of parroting of talking points. Republican talking points. John Kerry Is A Liar. John Kerry Changes Positions Too Much. John Kerry is Pro Abortion. My efforts to counter this thinking are universally intercepted by a dismissive hand wave. I am cut off, waved off, blown off. The line is, We Don't Like Bush, but We Don't Trust Kerry.
And I can hold only one man responsible for that: John Kerry. We are not any more ignorant than conservative Christian whites, whose agenda this truly is— this Re-Elect Bush Or Kerry Will Make You Have An Abortion nonsense. The Republican platform is based entirely on scare tactics. Their mission is to make us afraid. And the black Christians who have told me they may vote for the president have expressed, to a person, that they may reluctantly vote for Bush because they are AFRAID of what Kerry might do. It's the Republican message. We, the black community, have heard it. from the Republicans, from our brothers and sisters in the religious right. And we now accept it as Gospel because the Democrats have made almost no effort at all to properly inform us, their core base, about their core beliefs and core values.
Is George Bush the moral choice?
Are doubts about John Kerry enough to justify a vote for George
Bush? It's up to you.
Christopher J. Priest
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