Bribes + Vouchers = Black Bush Supporters

”They also called for a higher minimum wage, discontinuation of recent tax cuts, investment in public education and reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, some provisions of which are up for review in 2007… .

Yet the New York Times said not a word about the huge Nashville gathering – an event of potentially history-bending significance – while the Washington Post ran a blurb in its News In Brief section, page 20. Network and cable news outlets were totally silent, although they had all covered Bush’s 22 chosen Blacks at the White House – the political equivalent of bling-bling.

With the eager assistance of corporate media, Karl Rove is handily winning the battle of perceptions, creating the impression among whites and Blacks that the tide is surging rightward among African Americans. That’s bad enough – but on the ground, in localities around the nation, corporate and public faith-based and voucher-advocacy dollars threaten to savage historical Black political structures and, ultimately, destroy African Americans’ ability to collectively resist the Right.

‘Roving’ around New Jersey

The Right’s systematic assault on the Black body politic is dramatically evident in heavily Black and Latino northern New Jersey, a focus of Wal-Mart heir John Walton’s inner city pro-voucher “philanthropy” and Karl Rove’s machinations among Black ministers. The two paths intersect at the Newark-based voucher outfit Excellent Education for Everyone, or E-3. The hyper-aggressive political front can count on about a half million dollars a year from the Walton Family Foundation ($400,000 in 2003) and also benefits from federal Education Department grants to the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options (HCREO), another pro-voucher outfit. HCREO shares funding links (Bush’s Education Department and rightwing foundations) with the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), one of whose founding directors, former and future Newark mayoral candidate Cory Booker (see “Fruit of the Poisoned Tree, April 5, 2002), was also a founder of E-3. (Booker received campaign financing from the Waltons, as well.)

This isn’t conspiracy theory; rather, it’s the result of strategic planning and funding by the Bush regime, the Waltons and, especially, the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, which invented both the “Black” voucher “movement” and faith-based initiatives in the mid-Nineties.

Also on E-3’s board is Rev. Reginald Jackson, head of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey. Two weeks before the recent election, E-3 announced:

The most vital civil rights issue! Not affirmative action, not racism in the criminal justice system, not the right to adequate health care, but vouchers. What a difference rightwing money makes in the priorities of a section of the Black clergy.

Contrary to Eagleton Poll claims that residents of poor New Jersey communities favor school “choice” by up to 75 percent, a recent survey by the Strategic Marketing Group found only 24 percent of Black Newark households believe vouchers are the best cure for what ails education in the city. No matter – the twin lures of faith-based funding and vouchers are irresistible to ministers on the make, many of whom operate – or would like to operate – private church-based schools.

Karl Rove took a keen interest in the Garden State, especially when polls showed a surprising narrowing of the gap between Bush and Kerry. Rove visited the Newark area twice just before the election, and once afterwards, reserving special attention for Black clergy.

On election night, according to Lionel Leach, Director of the NAACP National Voter Fund-NJ, “Bush got about 2900 votes in the Central Ward in Newark, which is 82.6 percent African American, but you look and you see that’s where the majority of churches are.”

Leach is also a member of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) Commission. “New Jersey has the most voter suppression in the country,” he says. The GOP has “done everything possible to suppress the Black and Latino vote.” In what appears on the surface like a kind of political schizophrenia, Republicans use every legal and illegal means available to keep Blacks from voting en masse, yet spend vast sums to gain the overt or covert support of Black ministers.

Once the Republican strategy is understood, however, there is no contradiction. The Right’s goal is not to convert legions of Blacks to the GOP, which would seriously dilute the party’s white appeal and is, at any rate, an impossibility. The Right’s real goal is to create the impression of fundamental splits in Black ranks, and thus subvert the credibility of mainstream leaders who hold to the historical Black Political Consensus. Everywhere, there exist Black preachers and hustlers who are willing to advance the GOP project. Money does the trick. Marginal increases in Black votes for Republicans are welcome, especially in close races, but this is not a battle for the hearts and minds of Black America. Rather, it is an assault on the historical unity of African Americans.

The Republicans need only a few Black faces to fill up a room, or a television screen, and only a modest number of Black congregations to demonstrate newfound credibility in the community. They can achieve this at literally no cost, since faith-based and voucher advocacy (“public education”) grants are paid for with tax dollars – public money.

The Time Line of Corruption shows just how far the GOP has traveled in the decade since the Bradley Foundation devised its faith-based and voucher strategy and sold it to the national Republican Party. Back in 1993, Republican hit men like consultant Ed Rollins bribed Black clergy to quietly discourage their congregants from voting, as reported by a contemporary issue of the Columbia Journalism Review:

Today, Republicans offer corrupt ministers billions on condition that they dramatically break from the historical Black Political Consensus and, hopefully, crack the fragile Democratic coalition. The homosexual “threat” is a smokescreen for treachery. For every outraged Black preacher howling that he’s giving up on the Democrats because of the gays, there is a check or the promise of a check.

And maybe a visit to the White House.