Dividing Line Deal with the Devil

By Jack E. White

Let's face it: to most African Americans Newt Gingrich is one scary white man. "He's black folks' worst nightmare, a meanspirited bigot who thinks he's supposed to tear down everything we've built up," says Les Kimber, founder of the Fresno-based weekly California Advocate. Brooklyn Congressman Major Owens predicts that Gingrich's war on the welfare state will actually cause black children to starve. "These elitists under Gingrich will stop at nothing. They really don't care if people live or die."

The anxiety is understandable, if grossly exaggerated. Blacks have ample reason to mistrust a party that owes so much of its success to playing up white resentments. Moreover, black political clout in Congress has plummeted, some key civil rights groups are in disarray, and some fear Bill Clinton may lurch to the right in a desperate re-election strategy. As Ronald Walters, a Howard University political scientist puts it, "We're on the defensive across the board."

But politics need not be a zero-sum game, in which G.O.P. gains always mean black losses. Despite their obvious differences, the two groups share much common ground, and given the power that Gingrich wields, it makes sense to bargain with him. Growing numbers of blacks have become restive within the Democratic Party, which they feel takes their votes for granted. There is more talk than ever these days about ways to increase black political independence. Many blacks who now vote Democratic are much more in tune with Republican positions on social issues. "Republicans at this time are standing for some things that we, as religious people, would like to see from the Democratic Party," says Bishop Eddie Long, pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta. "We're antiabortion, pro-prayer in school, and we have a problem with gays in the military."

Nearly half of black voters in California supported Proposition 187, which would bar illegal immigrants from receiving most government services. In 1992 Wayne R. Bryant, a black state legislator, drafted the law that made New Jersey the first state to deny additional cash benefits to welfare mothers who give birth to another child. And while Gingrich's proposal to bring back orphanages has been denounced as a racist attack on black families, one of the first proponents of the idea was Joyce Ladner, a distinguished black sociologist.

So why aren't more blacks checking in to Gingrich's Home for Wayward Democrats? Because some G.O.P. politicians have become so dependent on racially coded campaigning that it amounts to political substance abuse. These Republicans seem to believe that without a subtle infusion of bigotry, their core message will fall flat, even with angry white men.

It's time to kick the habit. Playing on racial fears may be a winning election strategy, but it is incompatible with Gingrich's stated dream of becoming a leader for all America. One can only hope Gingrich was sincere in his speech to Congress last week when he reached out to blacks. He said he had "seldom been more shaken" than when a member of the Black Caucus told him of visiting a first-grade class and realizing that 1 of 4 or 5 of the boys would either be dead or in jail within 15 years. He added, "I don't know why, but -- maybe because I visit a lot of schools -- that got through. I mean, that personalized it. That made it real." That could mean Gingrich is serious about shedding his party's whites-only image. If so, blacks ought to meet him halfway -- if only to temper the wilder impulses of one very scary white man.