Wiley Henry, Tri-State Defender
- The 2008 Republican National Convention had the undivided attention of an African-American man on a mission: electing Arizona Sen. John McCain as the nation’s 44th president.
Paul Boyd is stumping for the GOP ticket of McCain and vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. He felt that the media intentionally made the crowd seem less diverse at the Republican convention. “I can assure you there were more black faces in the crowd than what the media showed on television,” Boyd said.
However, statistics released by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a renowned Washington-based research and public policy institution that focuses on issues of concern to African Americans and communities of color, have sounded an alarm for Republican Party leaders.
After seating a record number of African-American delegates in 2004, the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul had the lowest black representation in 40 years, the Center reported. The 36 African-American delegates in 2008 represented only 1.5 percent of the party’s total delegate count. That’s a 78.4 percent decline from 2004, when 164 black delegates participated at the Republican Convention.
