[Mb-civic] Bush's failing grade on racial issues - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Bush's failing grade on racial issues

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist  |  November 9, 2005

NASHVILLE
HISTORIAN John Hope Franklin has lived through 16 presidents and has met 
many -- or tried to.

In 1934 as a college student here at Fisk University, he attempted in 
vain to deliver a petition to President Roosevelt to protest a 1933 
lynching of a boy who had been seized by his killers only three blocks 
from the campus chapel. In 1976, President Ford appointed him to the 
National Council on the Humanities. In 1980, President Carter sent him 
to Belgrade as a member of the American delegation to the United Nations 
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization conference. In 1997, 
President Clinton appointed Franklin to chair the White House's 
Initiative on Race.

Asked to rate the presidents on their contributions to America's racial 
climate, Franklin cited Clinton, Carter, Johnson, even Ford, a 
Republican whom he described as a ''nice man" who ''didn't conspire to 
destroy people."

No such niceties were reserved for the 16th president of Franklin's life.

''President Bush is not even on the ratings scale where I can rate him," 
Franklin told the Trotter Group of African-American newspaper columnists 
Monday at his alma mater. Franklin, 90, is on tour to promote his 
autobiography, ''Mirror to America."

He said that to rate someone, you have to have a performance to rate. 
''I find it difficult to find his performance," Franklin said. ''I don't 
want to say what I really think of him because that might be unfair. But 
he is not among the presidents who I think have made constructive 
contributions, not among them at all. I wish that I could say the time 
would come when he will rise to the occasion, though I don't think he is 
capable of doing that."

Asked why Bush is incapable, Franklin's voice rose toward a roar. 
''There's no evidence he's interested in the public good, the public 
weal. Father was the president of the United States. You'd think he'd 
travel with his father. He'd never been out of the country except for 
Mexico when he became president of the United States. Father was 
ambassador to China, ambassador to the United Nations. Traveled 
everywhere, gone everywhere. At least read the papers!" -- yet the son 
''boasted he doesn't read the papers. So what is there to talk about 
with George Bush? I'm sorry. I'd be delighted if I could find anything 
to give me hope. . . . We're not very far for the gains we thought we made."

The incapable president has incapacitated the nation's discussion on 
racial issues, except when he inflamed it by joining the side of white 
students who wanted to destroy affirmative action at the University of 
Michigan, against the wishes of his highest-level African-Americans, 
such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, national security adviser 
Condoleezza Rice, and education secretary Rod Paige. As bad as that is, 
Franklin sees it as just part of national paralysis that is hurting 
everyone, not just African-Americans.

''I'm afraid the country is so bogged down in corruption and in double 
talk and in intrigue and in conspiracy and in lack of regard for the 
intelligence of the American public that I don't know where we're going. 
I wish I did. It keeps me awake at nights. I struggle to find something 
to say that would be good and constructive. But it's not possible."

What keeps Franklin awake is how little Americans themselves seem to 
feel any insult to their intelligence. ''Nobody's standing up in this 
country, almost nobody now," Franklin said. ''Black people are not 
standing up, white people are not standing up. Nobody's standing up. . . 
. We are almost incapable of having any critical judgment. Who is 
criticizing this country for sending billions that they bilked out of 
the American people? Billions! We take it as though it's just something 
we can't do a thing about."

Franklin said Americans clearly care more about sports teams than 
government chicanery.

''It's amazing," Franklin said. ''I sat at a table with three of our 
university presidents not too long ago. I thought they might discuss 
scholarship and the future of academic life in this country or something 
like that. But they were talking about how to make it into Class A 
athletics and what it would take and who would lose and who would gain.

''I'm not opposed to that, but these three great talents or talented 
three people in position of leadership are concerned with these matters 
and not with certain other matters . . . to assist us in moving to the 
next level. As long as we are concerned, not with those matters, but 
with other matters which it seems to me are inconsequential, I despair 
for the country."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/09/bushs_failing_grade_on_racial_issues/
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