Republican National Convention: Whitest in Forty Years

Posted by Blue Texan, Firedoglake at 5:01 PM on September 4, 2008.

Last month, the wingnuts freaked when Howard Dean called the GOP "the white party." But chances are if you saw the convention last night, you didn't see much color.

Organizers conceived of this convention as a means to inspire, but some African American Republicans have found the Xcel Energy Center depressing this week. Everywhere they look, they see evidence of what they consider one of their party's biggest shortcomings.

As the country rapidly diversifies, Republicans are presenting a convention that is almost entirely white.

Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago. Each night, the overwhelmingly white audience watches a series of white politicians step to the lectern -- a visual reminder that no black Republican has served as a governor, U.S. senator or U.S. House member in the past six years.

"It's hard to look around and not get frustrated," said Michael S. Steele, a black Republican and former lieutenant governor of Maryland. "You almost have to think, 'Wait. How did it come to this?' "

How'd it come to this, Mike?

Maybe it's that the Bush economy has been absolutely brutal on minorities. Or perhaps it was that a Republican President sat on his hands while New Orleans drowned, then didn't rebuild the city as promised. Might also be the ugly nativism that runs through the GOP's official party platform like a sewer. Or it could've been the not-so-thinly veiled racist attacks on Barack and Michelle Obama. Mystery solved!

The lack of diversity is out of sync with the demographic changes in the United States. The Census Bureau reported last month that racial and ethnic minorities will make up a majority of the country's population by 2042 -- almost a decade earlier than what the bureau predicted just four years ago. Two-thirds of Americans are non-Hispanic whites, 12.4 percent are black and 14.8 percent are Hispanic, according to 2006 census numbers.

...

"If we don't get better at reaching out, we're in big trouble," agreed Michael Williams, a black Republican who chairs the Texas Railroad Commission and who spoke Wednesday night. "It doesn't take much to see that this is not what America looks like. . . . We're trying, but we're not there yet."

Not by a longshot. And they're already in big trouble.

Blue Texan is a regular contributing blogger for FireDogLake.