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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif" alt="The New York Times" align="left" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0"></a>
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<div class="">February 13, 2013</div>
<h1>Neo-Classical Republicanism</h1>
<h6 class="">By
<span><span>ISHMAEL REED</span></span></h6>
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<p>
OAKLAND, Calif. </p>
<p>
DURING Tuesday’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/us/politics/obamas-2013-state-of-the-union-address.html?_r=0">State of the Union address</a>,
President Obama declared that “Our housing market is healing, our stock
market is rebounding and consumers, patients and homeowners enjoy
stronger protections than ever before.” </p>
<p>
Tell that to black Americans, who were hit harder than the rest of the
country by the recession and are having a harder time recovering. That
struggle is not a coincidence, or merely a result of past inequality.
During the housing bubble, blacks were deliberately targeted for
subprime loans: as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec11/bankofamerica_12-21.html">said</a>, the big banks committed “systematic discrimination against blacks and Hispanics.” </p>
<p>
One would think that Republicans, so eager to promote wealth building,
would see an opening. Instead, they blamed blacks for the recession,
accusing them, among other things, of taking out risky mortgages they
couldn’t afford. </p>
<p>
But the response on the left has been equally frustrating. By advocating
government action as the first response to black unemployment,
“progressive” opinion makers encourage the popular stereotype that
blacks and welfare are virtually synonymous (even though the bulk of
handouts go to red-state whites). </p>
<p>
With the Democrats in power and the Republicans at risk of going the way
of the Whigs, according to their former chairman, Michael Steele, maybe
the Republican Party should go back to its beginnings as the party of
freedom. </p>
<p>
Though Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, the party’s
first presidential candidate, in 1856, was the politician and soldier <a href="http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=f000374">John C. Frémont</a>,
whose campaign promised “free soil” and “free men.” In 1861, as the
general in charge of all territory west of the Mississippi, Frémont
issued the first proclamation emancipating slaves, which Lincoln quickly
revoked (the same Lincoln who frequently used racial epithets). </p>
<p>
The Republican Party was influenced by the abolitionist Liberty Party,
whose leading lights included William Lloyd Garrison, Susan B. Anthony
and Frederick Douglass, who later <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/73/1601.html">said</a>: “I recognize the Republican Party as the sheet anchor of the colored man’s political hopes and the ark of his safety.” </p>
<p>
Likewise, in an 1872 letter to her fellow activist Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Anthony wrote: “I shall continue to work for the Republican
Party ... for what the party has done and promises to do for women.”
</p>
<p>
Why can’t that emancipationist sentiment return today? The original
Republicans were born from a challenge to the far right — Lincoln gained
influence by criticizing the Know-Nothing Party, the far right of his
time. The same could happen today, gaining millions of adherents tired
of the right’s racism and the left’s big-government stereotypes. Call it
“neo-Classical Republicanism.” </p>
<p>
The door is wide open. As Mr. Obama’s critics on the black left have
noted, blacks haven’t benefited from his presidency as much as other
factions of the Democratic coalition. He’s less of a Malcolm X than a
Booker T. Washington, who would have endorsed the president’s belief
that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” </p>
<p>
Yet most of Mr. Obama’s black critics, mainly from academia, want him
only to move further left; they seem to lack confidence in the ability
of blacks to create businesses, when blacks have been operating
businesses since colonial times. Since 1979, when I moved to inner-city
Oakland, I’ve observed the work ethic of those residents holding
legitimate low-wage jobs as well as those engaged in the underground
economy. </p>
<p>
Why not send retired business leaders into our prisons to tutor those
young criminal entrepreneurs on how to run a legitimate business? They
have business savvy, just lousy lawyers. All they need is a different
product. This would be the perfect project for Mitt Romney; it could
become his legacy. </p>
<p>
I also agree with Republicans who say that the public schools have
failed black and Hispanic boys. (Judging from test scores, they’ve
failed white boys, too.) They should do more to promote the successful
ones as models. The English scores at the Oakland Military Institute and
the Oakland School for the Arts, charter schools with a large Hispanic
and black enrollment, exceed those of Oakland public schools. </p>
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Republicans should also be more open to programs like that of the educator and poet Haki Madhubuti, a founder of the <a href="http://www.bsics.net/">Betty Shabazz International Charter School</a>
in Chicago. He focuses on African-American literature — not just books
about black dysfunction, readily available in the marketplace, but a
variety of texts that give students alternative role models to those
provided by the media, who are too often seen toting semiautomatic
weapons. </p>
<p>
And Republicans should oppose discrimination against blacks by banks and
mortgage companies, which frequently deny blacks access to loans with
which to begin businesses and purchase homes so that they can develop
the equity toward a nest egg. And since the Republican ideal is a
colorblind America, how about promoting a colorblind criminal justice
system? </p>
<p>
Rather than running on bizarre suggestions that Mr. Obama was influenced
by his father’s anticolonialism, wouldn’t the billionaires in the
Republican Party get more for their money by embracing proven solutions
that address the real problems of black America? </p>
<p>
After all, if the president and the Democrats won’t do it, someone has to. </p>
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<p> <a href="http://ishmaelreed.org/">Ishmael Reed</a> is a visiting
scholar at the California College of the Arts and the author, most
recently, of the novel “Juice!” and the essay collection “Going Too
Far.” </p> </div>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br>
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