Opinion
Every Republican in Congress Fails Blacks
T
he new NAACP Report
Card for the first session of
the 112th Congress is out
and it shows that every graded
Republican member of the House
and Senate received an F on issues
considered important to the
nation’s oldest civil rights group.
In the Senate, all 46 GOP sena-
tors received Fs from NAACP. Of
those, 34 voted against the
NAACP’s position every time,
including Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell and former
presidential candidate John
McCain. In the House, all 238
Republicans graded also received
Fs. Although GOP House mem-
bers have a reputation but being
more conservative than their Sen-
ate colleagues, only 10 House
Republicans voted against the
NAACP every time.
In stark contrast to Republicans,
47 Democrats in the Senate earned
As, three received Bs, one got a D
and none received an F. The two
independents in the Senate, Con-
necticut’s Joe Lieberman and
Bernie Sanders of Vermont,
T HE C URRY
R EPORT
George E.
Curry
received a B and an A, respective-
ly.
In the House, all 238 Republi-
cans graded earned an F. House
Democrats voted like their coun-
terparts in the Senate: 159 earned
As, 22 got Bs, four earned Cs, one
got a D and four received Fs.
I have been studying NAACP
legislative report cards for a cou-
ple of decades and I can’t
remember a time when Republi-
cans in Congress have been this
solidified in their hostility towards
civil rights. About eight years ago,
Republican
Congresswoman
Mary S. Leach of Iowa earned a C.
More recently a couple of Repub-
licans have earned Ds as the rest
flunked.
In the session of Congress that
lasted from Jan. 5, 2011 to Dec.
23, 2011, only one Republican –
Senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) –
voted with the NAACP 40 percent
of the time. The GOP’s so-called
moderate senators – Olympia J.
Snowe and Susan Collins of
Maine – supported the NAACP 33
percent of the time.
The NAACP graded members
of Congress on votes taken on
such issues as repealing funding
Democrats
and
Republicans. There is difference –
a huge difference at that.
Even the Black Republican
alternatives are not viable alterna-
tives. Congressman Tim Scott of
South Carolina backed the
NAACP only 5 percent of the
time. The only other Black House
Republican, Allen B. West, also
earned an F, supporting the
NAACP 25 percent of the time.
It hasn’t always been this way.
In fact, most Blacks voted Repub-
Moderates have been replaced by
rabid Tea Party activists
for health care reform, judicial
nominations, deep budget cuts, job
creation and criminal justice
reform.
This NAACP Report Card
should put to rest the lie that
there’s no difference between
lican until switching to Franklin
D. Roosevelt. Dwight D. Eisen-
hower received 39 percent of the
Black vote in 1956. In his close
election with John F. Kennedy in
1960, Blacks gave Richard Nixon
32 percent of their vote.
In the bygone years, the Repub-
lican Party had such moderates as
New York Gov. Nelson Rocke-
feller, Mayor John Lindsey of
New York City and Connecticut
Sen. Lowell Weicker. It even had
Black Republicans who fought for
civil rights. But the GOP began
the political equivalent of ethnic
cleansing in 1964 with the nomi-
nation of Arizona Sen. Barry
Goldwater, who made an open
appeal to segregationists. Goldwa-
ter’s “Southern Strategy” went up
with flames, with Blacks giving
Lyndon Johnson 94 percent of
their vote.
Over the last half century, GOP
moderates, such as former Secre-
tary of State Colin Powell have
either been pushed out of the party
or marginalized. Moderates have
been replaced by rabid Tea Party
activists who have pushed an
already conservative party to the
extreme right.
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Gil Noble and Mike Wallace – Legendary Journalists
T
wo giants of journalism
died recently, days apart,
leaving a deep void in the
coverage of significant stories that
speak to the history of a people
and the corruption of the system.
Gil Noble was the producer/host
of the iconic, long-running,
award-winning public affairs pro-
gram “Like It Is,” which aired on
the ABC affiliate, WABC-TV, in
New York. The weekly program
that was aired 33 years, covered
people, places and events that
affected the African American
community, nationally and inter-
nationally, and focused on stories
often ignored by mainstream
media outlets. Gil died on April 5
at the age of 80 from complica-
T HE B LACK P RESS
Linda Tarrant-Reid
That same year, MLK and RFK
were assassinated, LBJ had decid-
ed not to seek reelection and
Richard M. Nixon, who became
known as “Tricky Dick,” would
go on to capture the highest office
in the land.
Noble got his first media job at
WLIB, a Black radio station in
Harlem in the early 1960s. A tem-
porary position that was only to
last three months, Noble loved his
new gig and vowed to learn
everything he could in the short
time allotted to him by Bill
McCreary, the news
director. After three
months, Noble was
retained and from his
radio perch came into
contact with the Who’s
Who of African Ameri-
can history and culture,
including Congressman
Adam Clayton Powell,
Jr., Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., Muhammad
Ali, Malcolm X, Dizzy Gillespie,
Errol Garner and members of the
Black Panther Party.
One chance meeting resulted in
an onscreen career. A White
reporter at WABC-TV asked
Noble if he would be interested in
a job as a TV reporter. Gil
answered in the affirmative, was
interviewed and given a one
week, on-air audition. His first
assignment was covering the
Newark riots right after the assas-
sination of Dr. Martin Luther
King. His work was so impressive
that he was hired as a street
reporter and would go on to
become a weekend anchor and
then the host of “Like It Is.”
“Like It Is” grew out of the
Kerner Commission’s Report, a
scathing study that concluded that
the news media’s lack of diversity
directly contributed to its poor
Noble and Wallace
were on TV at the
height of the Civil
Rights Movement
tions of a stroke; his appearances
on “Like It Is” ended in 2011.
The other journalist who passed
away the same week was Mike
Wallace, the “60 Minutes” fire-
brand who made most of his
subjects uncomfortable with his
hard-charging, confrontational
interviews. Wallace, 93, died after
a long illness. Wallace, the king of
ambush interviews, asked the
questions others were afraid to
bring up and in many cases,
received answers that no one
expected.
Noble and Wallace became asso-
ciated with TV programs that
would define their careers and
legacies in 1968, at the height of
the Civil Rights Movement. It was
a period of student protests against
the Vietnam War and political
upheaval at the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago.
coverage of urban the rebellions
Gil Noble was a beneficiary of
the White-owned media finally
holding up a mirror to its face. He
became the co-host of “Like It Is”
with actor Robert Hooks in 1968
In an interview with Harold Hud-
son Channer in 1998, Noble said
“Like It Is” was the only ABC pro-
gram
produced
and
conceptualized by people of
African descent.
No one will replace Gil Noble as
the journalist guide who brought
our stories to a wider audience in a
medium that was reluctant to give
us a stage. His interviews with
Muhammad Ali, Louis Farrakhan,
Sarah Vaughn, Lena Horne, Nel-
son Mandela, Aretha Franklin, and
his documentary on Malcolm X
have given us priceless, first-per-
son historic nuggets that define
each of us and our history.
No one will replace Gil Noble as
the journalist guide who brought
our stories to a wider audience in a
medium that was reluctant to give
us a stage.
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April 25, 2012 The Portland Skanner Page 5
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