Bush at the National Urban League:
All Stump, No Substanceby
Dr. Ron Walters
-Guest Columnist-
Finalcall.com --It
was interesting that George Bush appeared at the 91st annual convention
of the National Urban League (NUL) in any case, since he chose not to
grace the NAACP convention this year. The apology given to the NAACP was
that there was a "schedule conflict," the standard excuse given if a
politician does not want to attend a specific meeting.
So, in this context, there was an air of doubled expectation that,
somehow, the NUL was favored by Bush as a venue in which he would
address a series of issues of concern to the Black community. The
organization has many more corporate board members and supporters with
Republican ties and it did not play the same role as the NAACP in the
Florida crisis during the last election cycle, which understandably has
made Bush nervous about such forums. This would be logical inasmuch as
the NUL represents the sector of the Black community which pollsters
talk about when they size up the Black community in an attempt to guess
where the Republican breakthrough will come. They think that it will be
among those Blacks under 35-years-old, who have grown up in the
post-Civil Rights era, largely with Republican presidents, or among
their affluent parents, who have grown tired of the civil rights
leadership and agenda.
Thus far, they have been wrong on both counts, as both the great
group of young NUL professionals who met the previous week in the
"Training Ground Institute" and their parents, still believe in the
basic advancement agenda of the Black community�including civil rights,
social justice, and achieving access to economic rights and resources.
Yet, those who came were also expecting him to address many of the
issues that the media had come to associate with Blacks and which are
key to the question they raised, "What does Bush have to do to appeal to
Blacks?" Instead, Bush referred to his education agenda item, expressing
pride that it had passed both Houses of Congress and was now in
conference. His appearance failed most of the high expectations. First,
there was not a full house to hear him in the great hall at the
Washington Convention Center. Then he spoke about education in a way
that resembled his stump speeches on the campaign trail, loaded with
stock phrases, such as "the soft bigotry of low expectations," most of
which drew only mild applause.
In Bush�s narrow focus on his education bill before the Congress, he
had chosen an issue about which there was considerable agreement between
himself and National Urban League President and CEO Hugh Price, who had
often expressed the need, in the League�s education approach, for strong
system accountability.
H is main objective
on this occasion was to
send a pointed message to the congressional conference concerning what points he wanted to emerge in the
Education Bill that it was considering at that very moment. Bush
suggested that the House/Senate Conference Committee focus on
low-performing schools, that it also allow states to choose their own
accountability tests, and that there must be an independent assessment
of the rigor of the tests utilized to judge the excellence of the
performance of students. Again, there is little disagreement with these
issues, except for the fact that the education unions have not yet
accepted the comprehensive testing regimen, both because it could wash
out good teachers and because Bush�s successes in Texas were won by
teaching to the test. They are not certain that his methodology provides
a real education.
Nevertheless, the key to this speech was in what Bush did not say. He
happened to mention that he had met briefly with the League�s board and
they had put issues to him, such as election reform, criminal justice
reform and an economic opportunity agenda. Bush mentioned none of these
issues further. In fact, he continues to run from election reform, as a
few days earlier when he received the relatively moderate report of the
Jimmy Carter-and-Gerald-Ford-headed National Commission on Election
Reform. Bush said he accepted it "in principle." Also, he has said
nothing about the others�and has campaigned to weaken the agenda of the
upcoming United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.
So, while Bush came, he certainly did not conquer. If he had not
mentioned that while two-thirds of Black children were not reading at
fourth grade level, as opposed to 27 percent of white children, you may
not have known that he was speaking to Black people at all.
(Ronald Walters, a political science professor at the University of
Maryland at College Park, is co-author of the book "African American
Leadership.")
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