Bush in denial on Florida's voting scandal
By Derrick Z. Jackson, 1/17/2001
GEORGE W. BUSH was seen browsing in the children's section
of the Martin Luther King Jr.holiday. He went to an elementary
school in Houston to say that King fought for those who
were ''put down and held back.'' Bush said King
''inspired millions of Americans to face their own consciences.''
By staying in the children's section, Bush does not have to face
his own conscience. Bush is clearly untroubled by the hypocrisy
in praising King at the same time he is appointing an attorney general
and a secretary of the interior who glorify the states' rights of the
slave-holding Confederacy.
He has yet to show any feeling for the black men and women
of Florida who honored King's legacy by voting in record numbers
in the presidential election, yet after the election machinery of Florida
was done, those same black men and women left the polls feeling
like three-fifths of a voter.
During federal hearings last week on voting irregularities
in Florida that happened most often in predominantly black districts,
the Rev. Willie Whiting of Tallahassee said he went to the polls and
was told his name was stripped from the registration rolls because
he had a felony conviction. After the kind of persistent persuasion that makes
a minister a minister, he was allowed to vote.
Asked how he felt, Whiting said, ''I was slingshotted into slavery.''
That story reaffirmed the noxious possibility that Bush was slingshotted
by racism into the presidency. Remember how Governor Jeb Bush and
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris kept telling us with snide certainty in
November and early December that all the legal votes had been counted?
Now that George W. is dressing for his inauguration, an inauguration where there will probably be more black people cleaning the debris than in top hats, Jack 'em up Jeb and Katherine the Grate now admit to an acute
case of incompetence.
Jeb, despite bragging how he would deliver Florida for his brother, now says, mystifyingly,
that he bore no responsibility to investigate how black districts were left without
technology to handle the sea of voters. Bush knew there would be a high turnout,
yet he vetoed $100,000 for a voter education campaign.
HARRIS was even more bumbling, or obfuscating, before the US Civil Rights Commission.
She said she was unaware of state voter guides that stressed the importance to newly registered
voters of a single vote.
Far removed from the days when she was the assertive queen of certification, she now complains that she had no personnel to monitor the elections. Her fellow Republicans had slashed her office from 70 people to 39 prior to her arrival. She was so unable to answer questions about voting procedures that she kept referring them to the state elections chairman. In another biting piece of testimony, Linda Howell, an election supervisor for Madison County, said even she was listed as a felon.
Commission member Abigail Thernstrom, a Republican and an ardent foe of affirmative action,
dutifully wrote off the complaints as isolated incidents. Another commission member,
Christopher Edley, a Democrat who has been a top adviser to President Clinton on racial issues,
said, ''There's been some fairly systematic, implicit disenfranchisement of voters.''
None of this matters in the short term. Bush will be president,
and the Civil Rights Commission has no power to do anything with the information it has.
Even if the commission came up with strong findings of disenfranchisement,
they no doubt would be squashed by John Ashcroft, the attorney general nominee
who is more busy conducting seances with the far right to connect with the ghost of Robert E. Lee.
But it should not be missed how Bush praises King when his presidency
may well have depended on black folks being put down and held back.
Bush said King's example ''fired others to face police dogs and hoses and violence.'
Yet he may well be our president precisely because unannounced
police checkpoints near polling stations helped hose down the black vote.
Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said Bush's appearance at the school was an
''important part of reaching out.'' It was actually retrenchment. It is not a good sign
that Bush, when offered the platform of King's holiday, a holiday which in part celebrates
the black struggle to vote, remains in utter denial about his part in inflaming the racial divide.
Black men and women say they were slingshotted into slavery.Bush was slingshotted over them.
The only way Bush can celebrate the King holiday without looking black men and women in the eye
is to stay in the children's section.
When Bush stands before black children, he always has the comfort of looking down.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.
boston.com
This story ran on page A13 of the Boston Globe on 1/17/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company. |
