Politics & Power Quote by Pete du Pont

Du Pont is doing what shrewd party builders always do: treating identity as less a moral claim than a voting bloc in play. The line opens by driving a wedge inside Black America, separating "leadership" from "middle class" as if the former is a professional caste with its own incentives and the latter is the quiet, practical majority. That distinction isn’t neutral. It smuggles in a suspicion that civil rights leaders are ideologically rigid or self-interested, while the Black middle class is framed as sensible, order-minded, and therefore politically available.

Calling the Black middle class "conservative" is both an argument and an invitation. It reassures white Republicans that courting Black voters doesn't require policy transformation so much as better marketing: emphasize entrepreneurship, homeownership, church life, personal responsibility. The phrase "can be persuaded" is tellingly transactional; citizenship becomes a persuasion problem, not a history problem. Structural barriers, discrimination, and the legacy of the parties’ realignment are left offstage so the spotlight can stay on cultural affinity.

Context matters: du Pont was a pro-business Republican in the late 20th-century GOP, when the party was simultaneously consolidating white Southern support and periodically floating "outreach" efforts to minorities. The quote reflects a strategic fantasy that class mobility naturally nudges Black voters rightward, and that the main obstacle is "leadership" - a convenient scapegoat that avoids confronting why many middle-class Black voters still see the Democratic Party as the less hostile option.