Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Democratic Party has been the political entity in America that has stood for racial justice -- both in perception and in reality. As we all know, Republicans hatched their Southern Strategy at that time, embarking on two generations of race-baiting, coded (and not-so-coded) minority-bashing, and general demagoguing on "protecting" "normal" Americans from scary non-Caucasians, foreign and domestic.
This is well understood, even by low-information voters -- the Republicans have an image problem when it comes to race. It's the reason that despite their endless attempts to engage in minority group "outreach", Republicans usually fall flat in elections with minorities. And when Republicans are in power, the legislative agenda that ensues is almost always toxic to minority groups -- a fact that is not lost upon minority Americans. Whatever the Democrats' many imperfections on race issues, they've always been the party more amenable to the big tent, racially speaking.
Right-wingers are acutely aware of this, and when confronted with the Republicans' sorry record on race relations, they attempt to fire back with cherry-picked instances of Democrats being "racist". Usually an old Robert Byrd quote will do the trick, but there are other sources: Steny Hoyer (not inaccurately but clumsily) calling Michael Steele a "token" and citing his "slavish" devotion to the Republican Party, for instance. For all this straw-grasping by Republicans, I'm not aware of any (real) Democrat who's ever put together a screed as racist as Virgil Goode's.
The right will pull out these examples to create a false equivalence ("both parties do it!"), and while we all know how bogus this rhetorical technique is, it's still cumbersome to debunk without having to get into longwinded explanations of the parties' respective legislative agendas and their effects on minorities. I ran into someone who claimed Hoyer was "as bad as Trent Lott"; while I'm no fan of Hoyer for other reasons, to even remotely claim that Hoyer is in Lott's class as a racist is beyond any parameters of rational argument. But that's what we're often faced with.
So I'm putting these questions out to the field:
1. How do we effectively fight back against these false equivalences? The Democrats have some issues with race, to be sure, but they're not remotely as bad as the Republicans are. Can ANY of the not-inconsiderable progress America has made on racial issues over the last forty years be remotely credited to Republicans?
2. How do we prevent Democrats from feeding these morsels to the racist Republicans gleefully licking their chops at Democratic missteps on race?
3. In what legitimate ways are the Democrats deficient on race relations, and what can they do to improve in that regard?
Let's share our ideas. Thanks.