Bush's Grand Plan For Blacks: Put New Leaders In Charge

The mass Black mobilizations of the Sixties caused the corporate Right to despair of exerting more than marginal influence among African Americans. The reactionaries who took over the Republican Party during the period between Barry Goldwater’s 1964 defeat and Ronald Reagan’s 1980 victory were most concerned with achieving a national majority by transforming the GOP into the White Man’s Party. However, by the mid-Nineties rightwing strategists – most notably, those funded by Milwaukee’s Bradley Foundation – believed they had found formulas to alter power relationships within the Black community, itself.

Faith-based initiatives and private school vouchers, they theorized, could provide portals directly into the realm of Black grassroots politics. If generously funded and working in tandem, the twin strategies had the potential to subvert a portion of the Black clergy and create a wedge to divide inner city residents from teachers unions and other pillars of the Democratic Party. The synergy of bribed clergy plus a phony voucher “movement” would give the appearance of an authentic conservative “groundswell” among African Americans. Corporate media could be counted on to provide a narrative lifted directly from the position papers of the same think tanks that crafted the faith/vouchers strategy. The stage would be set for the media-hyped emergence of a “New Black Leadership” – Democrats as well as Republicans and “independents” – reflecting the supposedly growing conservatism of the Black middle class and youth.

All this, of course, came to pass. Once Republicans won the White House, the full resources and prestige of the federal government were made available to the preachers, hustlers and voucher operatives of the new, corporate-invented African American leadership. “Old-style” Black leaders – including those elected by the people – are dismissed as unrepresentative, out of step with the times. The political space for opportunistic forays by Black Democratic officeholders seeking rightwing favor has expanded exponentially. (Witness the machinations of Black Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, Jr.)

Read More
http://blackcommentator.com/129/129_cover_bush_plan.html