Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson on the GOP's issues with outreach.

The history of the Republican Party's estrangement from African Americans is well known. In 1960, Richard Nixon won 32 percent of the black vote. In 1964, Barry Goldwater -- who had opposed the landmark Civil Rights Act -- received just 6 percent of the black vote. This dramatic shift made possible Nixon's "Southern strategy," which political strategist Kevin Phillips explained to the New York Times in 1970, using some archaic terminology:

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that," Phillips said, "but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

In other words, the idea was to capitalize on the racial fears and grievances of Southern whites -- by letting black voters drift away from the GOP and even encouraging them to stay away.

Ours is a different era, and I'm not suggesting that the old Southern strategy persists in unreconstructed form. The Republican Party's dominance among white Southerners is not based on the kind of raw, unambiguous race-baiting that we saw decades ago.

What I am saying is that the Republicans have made no serious effort to appeal to black voters. Such an initiative would begin with an acknowledgement of the specific problems that African Americans face -- including the legacy of centuries of oppression and discrimination -- and a proffer of policies to address those problems. But this would contradict the GOP's dogmatic stance that government should be severely limited in its ambition.

Democrats, at least, are much better at talking the talk. But is the Democratic Party offering any new ideas -- or even the promise of meaningful resources -- to eliminate the stubborn, multigenerational poverty and dysfunction in which far too many African Americans are trapped? Are Democrats addressing the vast gap in wealth between middle-class blacks and their white counterparts?

I can't say I agree with Robinson on a lot of issues, but I'm simpatico with him on this.