President to address Urban League event
WASHINGTON -- President Bush is scheduled to address the annual convention of the National Urban League in Detroit today, a move which underscores his snub last week of another organization important to African-Americans, the NAACP.
In explaining Bush's unwillingness to address the NAACP's national convention, administration officials said the group's leaders are hostile to the president. They also noted that the group does not speak for all African-Americans.
Indeed, NAACP leaders have been sharply critical of the president's policies. And the few polls focused on black views indicate that African-Americans are more conservative than the NAACP on some issues.
But the organization is still held in high regard by many black Americans, and black supporters of the president are split on whether he was right to keep his distance from the group or if he should have made his case in person to the organization's members.
''While we understand that he wouldn't have been raring to go, we here at BAMPAC wanted him to go and lay out his policies and his accomplishments," said Alvin Williams, president and chief executive officer of Black America's Political Action Committee, a conservative group. ''I draw a distinction between the leadership and the membership, and we would have liked for him to do the same."
Tara Wall, the Republican National Committee's press secretary for outreach, said she supported Bush's decision not to accept the NAACP invitation. ''If folks from the NAACP want to hear from this president, I would encourage them to talk to this leadership and change the tone," she said.
That tone has been harsh, highlighting the enormous chasm that has opened between Bush and many black leaders.
During a speech in Washington last month, Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP's board, said of the Republican party: ''They preach racial neutrality and they practice racial division. They celebrate Dr. King and they misuse his message. Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the confederate swastika flying side by side."
Bush administration officials said the president was offended by the insinuation that he is racially insensitive and pointed to the racial diversity of his appointments. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who is black, spoke up on his behalf, as did another black Bush appointee, Education Secretary Rod Paige.
Paige, an NAACP member, wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal in which he blasted back at Bond and Kweisi Mfume, the former Democratic member of Congress from Maryland who is the NAACP's president. The NAACP's leadership, Paige said, ''has done a great disservice to our organization and to the founders of the civil rights movement with their hateful and untruthful rhetoric about Republicans and President Bush."
The education secretary also said Bond and Mfume ''do not own, and you are not the arbiters of, African-American authenticity."
Polls conducted by BAMPAC and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research organization in Washington that focuses on issues of concern to blacks, have shown that the percentage of African-American voters who classify themselves as Democrats fell between 2000 and 2002, though a solid majority still identify themselves with the party.
Democrats received far higher marks than their Republican counterparts on the NAACP's most recent congressional report card.
The NAACP's Washington bureau chief, Hilary Shelton, said the grades do not show that the organization is partisan. ''We have an agenda," he said. ''We will work with whoever will work with us to get that agenda through."
While the NAACP is aggressive and outspoken in pushing for its agenda, the Urban League often takes a different approach. A service organization, the Urban League focuses more on providing jobs, training, and education to inner city residents. It also accepts federal grants.
Like the NAACP, however, promoting civil rights is part of the Urban League's mission, and its president, former Democratic mayor of New Orleans Marc Morial, has been critical of Bush.
His criticisms, however, have not been as harsh as those of Bond and Mfume.
Matthew Little, a civil rights activist in St. Paul, Minn., who has been a NAACP member for more than 60 years, said the administration is trying to shift the blame for the poor relationship between the organization and the president. ''The issue isn't the leadership," Little said. ''It's the policies of the Republican Party."
Still, Bush, who did address the NAACP's annual convention when he was running for president in 2000, would have received a polite welcome if he had accepted the organization's invitation this year, Shelton said.
''I think it would have been gracious and respectful, befitting of the person who is president of the United States," he said.
Wayne Washington can be reached at wwashington@globe.com.
