Racial Politics: Playing With Fire : U.S. Civil Rights Commission issues a warning

Playing racial politics is an ugly game, yet campaign strategists have been known on occasion to turn in that direction to run up easy points. But is it too much to ask the President and other elected officials--Republican and Democrat alike--to keep race-based political attacks out of 1992 election campaigns?

Not at all. If our leaders condone and promulgate divisive attitudes, little wonder that others might find it easy to express similar ugly sentiments. That’s why the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is right to urge--if optimistic to hope--that President Bush and Democratic congressional leaders work together to eliminate racial tactics from political campaigns.

The independent federal agency has sent a letter to political leaders warning of rising racial divisions and tensions in schools, communities and on the job. Commission Chairman Arthur A. Fletcher wants to stop “destructive, divisive racial stereotyping . . . especially in political campaigns, by having our national leaders take the high moral ground on this issue without delay.”

The commission cited no specific examples of divisive campaign tactics, but racial politics have a long and dishonorable track record in American politics. For decades Democrats in the South kept control of the political Establishment by playing on racial fears to block blacks from voting and whites from defecting to the GOP.

The focus lately has been on the political tactics of Republicans. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) recently blasted President Bush, accusing him of exploiting racial fears for political advantage. “You have tried to turn the Willie Horton code of 1988 into the quotas code of 1992 . . .” he said.

Horton, a black inmate who raped a woman while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison, was the focus of a highly criticized Bush television commercial that attacked Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis in 1988. The GOP insisted the ad was designed to show that Democrats were soft on crime, not to play to white fears.

In another example of racial politics, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) used a TV commercial in his re-election campaign last fall to suggest that white applicants lost jobs to blacks because of race-preferential hiring policies. The apparent success of the commercial may have induced Republicans to value the so-called “quota” issue as a way of wooing white voters.

For their part, Democratic strategists are quick to point out that Bush routinely miscasts the House-approved version of civil rights legislation as a measure that would require racial quotas. That is what prompted Bradley to accuse the President of politically exploiting quotas and affirmative action.

The Civil Rights Commission sensibly recommended establishing campaign guidelines to deter race-based appeals, noting, “The use of inflammatory racial rhetoric in political campaigns will only fan the flames of racial division . . . making governance more difficult. . . . “ And no matter who wins an election, that creates a no-win situation.