I have tremendous respect for Andrew Sullivan. And that is why his article, "Drag Race," in the most recent issue of the New Republic is so appalling. Sullivan charges Al Gore with race baiting and concludes that as a result, he is "quietly grateful" that Gore may lose Florida because of the disenfranchisement of African Americans in the state.
Sullivan starts with a description of the NAACP's ad attacking George W. Bush for refusing to support hate-crimes legislation in the wake of the dragging murder of James Byrd Jr. The ad included gruesome footage and a voiceover by Byrd's daughter describing the renewed pain she felt when Bush refused to sign stronger hate-crimes legislation.
I've heard principled arguments against hate-crimes bills -- that they don't work as a deterrent and violate free speech. But Sullivan acknowledges that Bush actually supports hate-crimes laws. Instead, Sullivan argues, "Bush opposed the stronger hate-crimes law the ad alluded to because it covered homosexuals; his opposition had nothing to do with the Byrd case."
Sullivan argues that the NAACP ad all but accuses Bush of lynching. Perhaps instead, it accuses him of insufficient outrage over the Byrd murder. In fact, Sullivan's defense of Bush indicates that though Bush supports hate crimes legislation -- and truly believes it might deter crimes like the Byrd slaying -- his homophobia was strong enough to overwhelm his support for the bill. In other words, his desire to deny gays and lesbians the extra protection of hate crimes laws was so powerful that he was willing to risk more Byrd-type killings to deny them that safety. Some defense.
Sullivan goes on to describe in great detail the disenfranchisement of African Americans in Florida this election season. First, voting machines in predominantly black precincts were so old that they registered "spoiled votes or nonvotes" at a much higher rate than in predominantly white precincts. (Sullivan points out that this is because predominantly black counties tend to be poorer, so the injustice is really class-based, not race-based. That's true, but no more defensible.)
And, Sullivan quotes a Village Voice article as pointing out that only 53 percent of African Americans in Duval County are literate. Because they can't read, he argues, they were more easily confused by the fact that the presidential race spilled over onto two pages. (What Sullivan doesn't note is that the study to which the Village Voice referred defined illiteracy as "meaning they could read at a level no higher than ninth grade," a fairly high standard.) Sullivan charges that since African Americans didn't get the help they needed at the polling place, many people followed the Democratic Party's misguided instructions to vote on each page and ended up voting for two presidential candidates.
As a result, Sullivan admits, "Gore may be right that he won Florida -- if you count intention to vote rather than successful execution." This is a major concession for someone who has been excoriating Gore in the New Republic's pages for the whole campaign season. Is Sullivan outraged at the apparent gap between voter intent and the official vote count? Is he distressed that antiquated machines and confusing ballot design disenfranchised thousands of African Americans? Not very. He says:
But it's hard not to have mixed feelings about this apparent injustice. On the one hand, high black turnout is a great thing, and it's maddening that many voters didn't get the help they needed to vote correctly. . . On the other hand, it's hard not to be dismayed by a campaign that used the harshest of racial appeals to rally a base around victimized group-think. . . If Al Gore pressed his manipulation of a constituency beyond the breaking point, then it's hard to feel too much sympathy for his plight.
It sounds disturbingly like Sullivan is arguing that if African Americans are stupid enough to fall for Gore's race baiting, then they don't deserve to have their votes count. This nation rejected that argument with the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870 and again with the implementation of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. What's dismaying is to read it again in the year 2000.
