Posted on 04/13/2013 10:21:23 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Rand Paul’s speech at Howard University yielded about what would have been expected. The media focused on the crowd’s tepid reactions. Various liberal pundits dwelled on Paul’s awkward moments: the senator unwisely choosing a “did you know” riff that assumed his audience’s ignorance about certain historical points of reference, while he blanked on the name of Edward Brooke, a Republican who happened to be the only black man in the 20th Century who won a Senate election; and Paul’s tortured effort to contextualize his criticism of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
If Paul was simply showing up as a token of “courage”, the kind of symbolism consultants push on candidates, he deserved the dismissive results he received. After all, at the root of such a strategy is not really bravery, but a cold willingness to use the kids who attended as props whose indifference lets him demonstrate resilience.
Assuming that Paul had a nobler goal, that of actually winning converts among Republicans’ single hardest to crack demographic, African Americans under 29, I would still call it a missed chance, from his perspective as well as theirs, and a reminder of why the gap between blacks and the political right is such a chasm.
First, there was Paul’s fixation on historical alignments that predate his audience’s grandparents. The men and women who heard Paul could have used a primer not on 19th century history or even pre-Voting Rights Act Dixiecrats, but on the GOP’s contemporary pattern of electing blacks, Latinos, and East Asian Indians to governorships or Senate seats. It would have been worthwhile to tell the many southern born black kids at Howard that it is Republicans who put a black man in Strom Thurmond’s old seat.
Paul devoted a lot of time to the dirty hands another generation of Democrats brought to the debate over race. But it would have been much more relevant for Paul to push his audience on why poverty and inadequately funded black school districts stayed so persistent during the decades of Democratic legislative rule in the South, a run that in the states many of Howard’s students return home to every summer, just ended in the last six years.
I wish Paul had given education reform a rationale instead of the catch phrase “civil rights”. I wish he had spoken more bluntly about the black children whose schools are too often promoting them without preparing them, or the middle class black couples who can’t buy their kids into the social capital and better prospects in the elite private schools across town, or even the award winning public school district in a neighborhood outside their price range.
I give Paul points for having the guts to denounce the comparison between voter ID laws and the cruelest tactics of the segregation era. But I wish he had made an additional point that a roomful of young black adults would have understood well: black people trying to navigate the modern commercial world without an ID face a lot more hurt and inconvenience than missing an election, and that pushing them to get the license or ID photo that makes them more functional strengthens a community instead of suppressing it.
I wish that Paul had understood history better himself, at least enough to know why African Americans resist a rhetorical vocabulary that depicts government as a threat to liberty. Howard’s undergraduates know that line from their textbooks, and they know it in the worst morally plausible context, that of segregationists trying to twist the constitution into a line of defense for Jim Crow. Paul would have done well to blast that misuse of the concept of liberty, and to spend time explaining that he knows events have made an absurdity out of it. The admission would have separated his libertarianism from the ugliness that preceded it.
On the subject of federal assistance, Paul rightly held his ground that more is not always better. But his mantra that “I want a government that leaves you alone” had no chance of resonating with students who view government as a source of student loans and Pell Grants, and to whom being left alone might well mean being uninsured during a health crisis. Paul avoided making the case that a conservative agenda might actually outperform liberal goals in the area of poverty or education. And in a university setting that teaches the value of offering evidence for one’s propositions, Paul mentioned no specific policies that would address the interests of people about to enter an uncertain job market while straining to pay down the debt of financing a degree. In other words, a would-be president who has talked forcefully about his party’s need to refashion itself did no more than repeat a narrative that neither black nor white conservatives have managed to sell to black audiences.
Paul had a chance to demonstrate something bolder than the willingness to endure a hostile crowd: that is, if he had the nimbleness to couch his arguments in the interests of the people he was trying to reach; and the empathy to show that economic inequality, entrenched poverty, and the rising numbers of blacks under 35 who aren’t reaching their parents levels of economic performance are the kinds of things he worries about.
Instead, Paul gave Howard what it expected to hear. So, both Paul and the crowd that turned out can say that they both stood the other’s company. The truth is they both left a little bit diminished.
I would make this statement after watching his speech. If he just affected ten students watching the speech...then it was worth it. He is challenging them to think outside the box, and it’s going to be hard to beat his logic. If you are in college....you need a real job to pay off the real stupid loan you took to be there. Any hope of the government getting you that job is not realistic. Maybe they will think about his words.
I commend Paul for the effort and I think he was sincere, but it was a miss.
I watched Rand Paul’s speech and the Q&A after. I thought that he was pretty well received given the situation and he handled the questions pretty well. At least he is trying and if he keeps it up he may well get a few young blacks to vote for him in 2016. Especially if the choice is Rand Paul or Hildebeast.
I have always been puzzled as to why blacks vote well over 90% Democrat.
Blacks are taken for granted by one party, and outreach by the GOP has been tepid, precisely because we all know that blacks will vote 90+% Democrat.
I applaud Rand Paul for going to Howard, and challenging some of the conventional thinking of these students. One key unspoken unwritten rule is that these black students will vote Democrat 90+% of the time. They vote for Democrats without thinking.
And how many know that the KKK and the segregationist politicos of the past were largely Democrats? How many of today’s young people, not just young black people, know the true history???
maybe the writer ought to help Rand write his next speech and himself become part of the solution instead of part of the problem
It’s real easy for this guy to sit behind his computer and criticize. If he thinks he could do better, why doesn’t he?
I watched the video and was impressed at how well he handled himself. I don’t have a television and I had never seen/heard him in action. So at least one person was positively affected.
Answer: They are the party that is transferring money from white taxpayers to blacks. They are the party that gives federal and state job preferences to less qualified blacks. They are the party that will place a less qualified black in a college classroom over a competent white.
I think Artur Davis is the black state legislator that switched from Dem to Rep and gave a really good speech at the RNC convention. I was hoping we would hear more from him. Perhaps he should try getting in to give those speeches?
The GOP seems to be too concerned with keeping up the losers side in the march toward a strange combination of communism and crony capitalism.
...the senator unwisely choosing a “did you know” riff that assumed his audience’s ignorance about certain historical points of reference, while he blanked on the name of Edward Brooke, a Republican who happened to be the only black man in the 20th Century who won a Senate election; and Paul’s tortured effort to contextualize his criticism of the 1964 Civil Rights Act... Assuming that Paul had a nobler goal, that of actually winning converts among Republicans’ single hardest to crack demographic, African Americans under 29, I would still call it a missed chance, from his perspective as well as theirs, and a reminder of why the gap between blacks and the political right is such a chasm... The men and women who heard Paul could have used a primer not on 19th century history or even pre-Voting Rights Act Dixiecrats, but on the GOP’s contemporary pattern of electing blacks, Latinos, and East Asian Indians to governorships or Senate seats. It would have been worthwhile to tell the many southern born black kids at Howard that it is Republicans who put a black man in Strom Thurmond’s old seat... to push his audience on why poverty and inadequately funded black school districts stayed so persistent during the decades of Democratic legislative rule in the South, a run that in the states many of Howard’s students return home to every summer, just ended in the last six years... points for having the guts to denounce the comparison between voter ID laws and the cruelest tactics of the segregation era. But I wish he had made an additional point that a roomful of young black adults would have understood well: black people trying to navigate the modern commercial world without an ID face a lot more hurt and inconvenience than missing an election, and that pushing them to get the license or ID photo that makes them more functional strengthens a community instead of suppressing it... Howard’s undergraduates know... of segregationists trying to twist the constitution into a line of defense for Jim Crow. Paul would have done well to blast that misuse of the concept of liberty, and to spend time explaining that he knows events have made an absurdity out of it. The admission would have separated his libertarianism from the ugliness that preceded it.
A white oerson is never going to be able to convice a black audience.
The Republicans need a black front guy, such as Dr. Carson to scream the exact same message from the rooftops over and over.
sorry for the typos...
Why should blacks vote for a Party that wants the government to leave them alone when the other Party will break any law to give them other people’s money? The reason blacks and women vote for Uncle Sugar is because they feel they cannot compete on their own.
Exactly. Keep going back.
My only thought is Stop bringing up the 60’s It’s total past tense damn people it’s 2013 you have a Black Prez get over it!
Government countinues the Racial Agenda when they want to know what everyone’s race is! When we all just become Americans and not what breed we are thats when racisim will die!
However that said Government does not want it to die!
I would imagine in the dog world because of humans the
Pit Bull has a bad image! But Dogs Say were just all dogs!
Give Rand an A simply for trying to change the unbalanced dynamics of the far left bias AND to Howard University, standing shoulders over the Liberal Universities and colleges that refuse to listen to any conservative view.
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