Time for a united Black front

While an anxious Black America awaits its fate under President George W. Bush, one thing is certain: With the Bush victory, battle lines are drawn between Black conservatives and "mainstream," generally anti-Bush leaders. Mainstreamers brand conservatives opportunists. Conservatives label mainstreamers poverty pimps who foolishly put all their eggs in the Democratic Party�s basket. The voices of Black nationalists will likely condemn both sides.

What needs to happen is less shouting and more talking based on potential areas of common agreement and recognition of the current political reality. The reality, as many analysts have noted, is there has been a rightward shift in American politics since the 1980 presidential election of Ronald Reagan.

With that election, the Democratic Party started a metamorphosis which spawned New Democrat Bill Clinton and sidelined old-school Democrats. Mr. Clinton grabbed Republican issues: He came out pro-death penalty, lukewarm on affirmative action, vowed to end welfare and dissed Rev. Jesse Jackson to show his autonomy from the civil rights leader during the 1992 election.

While on the �92 campaign trail, Mr. Clinton returned to Arkansas to preside over the execution of a mentally retarded Black man, just as Mr. Bush returned to Texas to oversee the execution of Black inmate Gary Graham, despite questions about his guilt, this election year.

The rightward shift in American politics and feelings of exclusion and anger during the "welfare queen," "Willie Horton" Ronald Reagan-George Bush, Sr., years of attacks and federal cutbacks�with Black women stereotyped as the major problem in a horrendous social service system, Black men scapegoated as criminals and little federal money or sympathy for urban problems�fueled Black anger and resentment.

Blacks felt abandoned by Democrats, unwanted by the GOP and politically impotent. Mr. Clinton�s sun glasses and sax playing ability to woo Black folks, and willingness to talk about race was a welcome change.

Blacks felt Mr. Clinton at least felt their pain, while he gutted welfare needed by poor Blacks, abandoned high level Black appointees at any hint of political liability and failed other tests. He did make high level Black appointments, offered more Black federal judgeships, launched a shaky national dialog on race and put Africa on America�s foreign policy map.

Mr. Bush invited some Black religious leaders to a Dec. 19 meeting in Austin, Texas, has reached out to Rev. Jackson, spoke to the NAACP during the campaign pledging to uphold civil rights laws and conceded his party�s misuse of race as a political tool was wrong. He selected two Blacks, Gen. Colin Powell for secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice for national security advisor, for major positions in his administration.

Mr. Clinton wasn�t perfect and despite the conservative choir�s most ardent singing, Mr. Bush isn�t perfect either. Nearly 80 percent of Blacks feel his election was illegitimate, according to a Dec. 18 poll.

Black leaders need to end name calling and find ways to work together. Why? Neither side has a monopoly on what is right and their champions aren�t without serious flaws. Crafting some basic points of agreement can also get more from the Bush administration than attacks and counterattacks on one another�pastors, activists and leaders.

What could both sides agree on? They could start with more funding for neighborhood AIDS prevention programs, call for an end to racial profiling, solicit more financial and technical help for grassroots organizations, lobby for economic development in urban areas and Africa, fill the gaps in welfare reform, confront racial discrimination in government and private industry, and promote moratoriums on racially imbalanced capital punishment at the federal and state levels�areas addressed by the Million Family March National Agenda.

Putting loyalty to party or philosophical label above the needs of the community only makes leaders at all ends of the spectrum appear self serving.