Mitt Romney will address the NAACP’s national convention on Wednesday. What should he say? What does Mitt need to tell Black America? Well some of it it is identical to what the President should tell us. White people think they got jobs problems but Black unemployment is at a staggering 14.4%. It’s stayed double the white unemployment rate since 1972 when the figures were first tracked. What can be done about that? The large chronic unemployment rate contributes to the rare of Black crime which justifies in many minds shredding the 4th amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches to allow stop and frisks which make cops look tough but yield little. What do we do about that? Does he have an urban economic agenda that can revitalize the forsaken ghettoes of America or will he perpetuate the failed War on Drugs? And does he have a plan to narrow the education gap between the races which he called the Civil Rights issue of our time?
There are also questions that are unique to Mitt. Did he ever believe Blaks are the cursed descendants of Cain as some Blacks have said they were told by Mormons? What impression was left by the church’s policy of racial discrimination which ended in 1978 when he was 31. In 2008 Romney said he was moved by the ban’s removal.
I’d like to hear whether he agitated for the ban’s removal or accepted it.
Romney’s father Michigan Governor George Romney marched with Civil Rights activists in 1963 and pushed to end racial discrimination in housing as Nixon’s Secretary of housing and urban development. He once called himself quote “a member of a minority group that knows the longtime harmful effect of persecution and discrimination,” unquote thus linking his faith and his passion for racial justice. Does Mitt feel the same link? Look we know Mitt won’t win many Black votes but we must know if he understands that Black problems are not solely the province of Black people. If your neighbor’s house is on fire then you have a problem. In many ways Black America is a house engulfed in flames. What would Mitt do?
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