To hear some prominent black Americans tell it, Texas governor George W. Bush's presidential victory for the Republican Party represents a return to the days of lynchings and slavery. This nonsense is a direct result of the Democratic Party's willingness in recent years to foster identity politics and play the "race card", promoting an increased sense of black grievance and entitlement.
During the campaign, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People ran a television advertisement linking Bush with a 1998 murder in rural Texas, when three white supremacists chained a black man to a truck and dragged him to his death. Al Gore's black female campaign manager said the Republicans were the "party of the white boys", and Gore himself insinuated that Bush's judicial philosophy harked back to a time when the US Constitution regarded a slave as "three-fifths of a human being".
After the November 7 election, black Democrats attempted to make the Florida vote count debacle a racial issue. Reverend Jesse Jackson claimed that George Bush's brother Jeb, who is the governor of Florida, had participated in "a concerted effort to take away the votes of blacks", through actions designed to intimidate and confuse the black community.
Another leading black clergyman, Al Sharpton, whose history of anti-white demagoguery and incitement did not prevent Gore from seeking his support, joined Jackson in likening the Florida situation to brutal attacks on civil rights campaigners in Alabama in the 1960s. Finally, when the US Supreme Court made its majority finding in Bush's favour, Jackson eclipsed his previous humbug by comparing it to the infamous 1857 Dred Scott case, when the court ruled that a Negro could not be an American citizen.
Instead of repudiating these inflammatory statements, members of the Democratic Party and much of the American media stayed silent. Even in his otherwise gracious concession speech, Al Gore's regret at being unable to fight for those who need "barriers removed" and "who feel their voices have not been heard" seemed to be a nod towards the rabble-rousers.
But claims that there was a Republican plot to disenfranchise blacks are without foundation. For starters, while comprising only 13 per cent of Florida's population, blacks made up 15 per cent of the state's voters, a 50 per cent higher turnout than in 1996.
And the actions supposedly intended to confuse black voters were mostly due to blunders by Democratic Party officials. Thus in Duval County, where thousands of ballots in mainly black precincts were invalidated because they indicated a choice for a second presidential candidate as well as Al Gore, voters were following wrong instructions given by election workers from the Democrats.
Furthermore, although black organisations made numerous allegations about supposed instances of racially-based electoral fraud and harassment to the Federal Justice Department (still controlled by the Democrats), the department found that none of the complaints warrant any action.
Black leaders obviously felt that they could get away with their shameless accusations without being called to account by either their constituency or the nation's left-liberal media. This is testimony both to a disturbing level of black distrust, and the unwillingness of America's progressives to challenge it.
Amongst other things, this distrust is manifested in the beliefs, held even by many middle-class blacks, that the CIA has funnelled hard drugs into inner-city black communities, or that an innocent O.J. Simpson was framed by a racist Los Angeles Police Department.
I have taken these examples from a courageous new book by John McWhorter, a black professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Called Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, it presents an unsettling picture of a world-view that extends well beyond the inner-city ghettos, to prosperous blacks living in the suburbs. By pandering to this world-view, Democrats have tied up black support -- nationally Gore gained around 90 per cent of the black vote.
McWhorter contends that most blacks refuse to acknowledge the momentous social, economic and legal gains they have made since the 1950s. Instead, they are locked into a destructive cultural pattern of "victimology", separatism and anti-intellectualism. This encourages black Americans to see every setback and disappointment as evidence of white racism, to believe that they should not be held "to mainstream standards of morality or academic achievement", and to value racial solidarity over reasoned analysis.
McWhorter's book has caused much outrage. But his assessment is consistent with a plea from two leaders of CORE, one of America's oldest and largest civil rights organisations, with a distinguished history of struggle against discrimination in the face of white hostility and violence. Written well before the election and addressed to the then unknown next president, it is even more relevant now.
CORE urged the next president to turn away from the current pre-occupation with racial politics. This means challenging the inclination of blacks and other minorities "to view themselves through a prism of race or ethnicity instead of seeing themselves as individuals". The plea concluded that "the next president must dedicate himself to ending the immoral, corrupt "one party state" of black America". This would be "a great blessing for African-Americans, and it would help arrest the current cultural dissolution of the American nation".
This is much more in tune with George Bush's vision than with that of Al Gore. And by nominating Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to positions crucial for America's security, rather than ghettoising token blacks into areas distant from his own agenda, Bush has shown his commitment to a more inclusive America than anything the Democrats would have offered.
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