Symbolic Lynching Resolution Forced Concrete Political Choice

At least one longtime black Republican activist, who thinks all Republicans should have signed on, is not afraid to put his name on the record.

Harold Doley Jr., who became the first African American to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange 32 years ago, fired off an angry e-mail to the RNC this week. He told me that Frist personally called him on Wednesday to assure him that support for the resolution was unanimous and that the party was committed to diversity.

"I would have liked it if all of these senators had sponsored the bill," said Doley, from New York, where he runs Doley Securities, one of the nation's oldest black-owned investment banks. "But that's not the case, and I understand it's not the case for various reasons."

Doley said he was already upset that after meeting with House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay a few years ago about increasing black personnel in key RNC and congressional staff positions, little has been done in that regard, even after he personally forwarded top Republican officials dozens of potential candidates at their requests.

"My party needs to be reaching out to the African American community as America becomes browner and blacker," said Doley, who considers himself a moderate. "The party needs to build constituencies. Some of the right-wingers have told me, 'Well if I'm not happy I should change my party.' No, I'm not going to change parties. I'm going to change my party from within to try to expand its base."

Power of Symbols

Symbolic politics is the most powerful. Symbolic politics is about messaging. It's about code words. It's how a politician sends subtle cues about priorities and whose interests he or she is there to protect.

Symbolic politics is Ronald Reagan launching his presidential re-election campaign by extolling the virtues of states rights in Philadelphia, Miss., where Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen killed three civil rights workers in 1964.

Symbolic politics is the "white hands" ad that former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) ran against African American opponent Harvey Gantt in 1990. Symbolic politics is George W. Bush going to speak at Bob Jones University in the 2000 presidential election campaign.

From those symbolic events, black people ask, if you can't respect my history how can you protect my interest in Washington?

Frist has said repeatedly that none of his colleagues asked him to schedule a roll call vote. But in news reports, aides to Landrieu and Allen contradicted him.

I called the offices of several of the senators who have not signed on as co-sponsors to give them an opportunity to explain their positions. According to the Congressional Record, these were the members who did not originally co-sign the legislation:

Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)