We’re Not Writing Off Anyone

But blacks may already have written off Reagan and the G.O.P.

It is not unusual for a rousing speech by Ronald Reagan to evoke a standing ovation from an appreciative audience—unless that audience happens to be black. With no other racial group is his standing so low or have criticisms of his approach to governing been so severe. But last week in Washington, the President had an overwhelmingly black audience on its feet and cheering four times, as he reasserted his Administration’s commitment to reaching out to the black and poor. “I know that there are those who have accused the Republican Party of writing off the black vote,” Reagan declared in a speech to the National Black Republican Council (N.B.R.C.). “Well, I’m here to tell you we’re not writing off anyone.”

The real question, however, is whether blacks have not written off Reagan and become hopelessly alienated from the “party of Lincoln,” which enjoyed a virtual monopoly on black support until the New Deal. Today only 8% of blacks identify themselves as Republicans, compared with 81% who consider themselves Democrats. There are so few black Republicans, says Washington Businessman Connie Mack Higgins, a Lifelong member of the G.O.P, that “it’s almost Like being addicted. You suffer not only the slings and arrows of your enemies but of your friends and neighbors and all of those who think you’re out of your mind.”

The reasons for black disaffection are easy to discern. For one thing, blacks have suffered badly during the current economic slump. Their jobless rate of 18.8% is almost double the general level. The Reagan Administration’s conservative rhetoric, combined with its assaults on Big Government, activist courts and social welfare programs, have been interpreted by blacks as covert attempts to undermine the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement. Reviewing the record of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division since Reagan took office, a bipartisan task force of Washington lawyers charged last week that “the Administration has retreated from well-developed, bipartisan policies that it inherited from its predecessors.” As evidence of its intent to enforce these policies, the Justice Department last week sought to join as plaintiffs blacks and Hispanics who have brought a discrimination suit against Chicago’s new city-council districting plan.

The Reaganauts argue that in the long term the President’s cutbacks on federal spending, though temporarily painful, will do more for black economic progress than the Liberal policies of past Administrations. As Reagan declared in his speech last week, “If the economic expansion and low inflation of the years prior to the Great Society had been maintained, black families and aLl Americans would be appreciably better off today.” In the view of the White House, many blacks, particularly those in the middle class, which has mushroomed since the 1960s, are as disillusioned by costly welfare and job-training programs, high taxes, court-ordered school busing and crime as their white counterparts, and are ready to be converted.

Indeed, there is a small but militant cadre of black intellectuals who have embraced conservative ideas with the ardor of a William F. Buckley. These right-wing blacks have set up a number of think tanks, Like Public Relations Consultant J.A. Parker’s Lincoln Institute for Research and Education in Washington. They have also established the New Coalition for Economic and Social Change, a 300-member, California-based group of inteLlectuaLs, businessmen and politicians closely linked to the conservative Heritage Foundation. Says New Coalition’s president Clarence Pendleton, who is also chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: “What we’re trying to relay to both blacks and whites is that there is a lot that blacks can do for themselves.”

Much of what the black conservatives advocate is anathema to traditional civil rights leaders. In effect, they would reduce the Federal Government’s role as an aggressive advocate of special protection for minorities and leave it up to blacks to rise or fall on their own. At seminars on “Rethinking the Black Agenda,” including one held last week in Washington, speakers have urged such drastic shifts in federal policy as scrapping the minimum wage for teen-agers and cutting back affirmative action in hiring and university admissions.

A basic tenet of the black conservatives is that federal policies and a lack of initiative on the part of blacks, rather than racial discrimination, are the most significant obstacles to progress. Says Economist Walter Williams of Virginia’s George Mason University: “Racial discrimination is as pervasive as oxygen, but it doesn’t explain very much in itself. Greater focus needs to be placed on the rules of the game.” Among the rules of the game that foster black joblessness, he argues, is the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires federal contractors to pay high union wages to semiskilled black construction workers. Since the productivity of these men as a group is lower overall than that of full-fledged union members, claims Williams, employers have no incentive to hire them. He also points to occupational Licensing requirements that, on the surface, have no racial component at aLl. In New York City, for example, Licenses to own and operate taxis can cost up to $62,000, and there are relatively few black cab owners. In Washington, where the cost of a license is less than $100, the vast majority of cabs are owned by blacks.

Provocative though many of the black right-wing ideas are, it seems unlikely that they wilL inspire new recruits for the G.O.P. Observes William Raspberry, the astute black columnist for the Washington Post: “Even those blacks who criticize the traditional Liberal approach are not willing to say that the best way to help blacks is to get the Government out of the way, and let the market work. We don’t have the security to allow the Government to be neutral with regard to our struggle.”

Perhaps the most persuasive rationale for blacks to join the G.O.P. is to ensure their access to the White House, no matter which party is in power. As Reagan pointed out in his speech last week, “For too long now, black Americans seem to have been written off by one party and taken for granted by another.” The President’s point is undoubtedly valid, but his argument is unlikely to spark a black exodus to the G.O.P. so long as the Reagan Administration’s record on civil rights is suspect. Meanwhile black allegiance to the Democratic Party is so ingrained that Edwin T. Sexton, head of a black political consulting firm, gloomily advises ambitious black candidates “not to run on the Republican ticket in an all-black community.” — By Jack E. White