So far the Democrats hoping to be the next U.S. President have participated in forums for the Latino community, the African American/black community, the U.S. Indigenous community, and the GLBT community. And the Republicans? Well as a group they seem to only want to debate/participate in forums for the mainstream which by default, let’s be real here, means white middle U.S.

So what’s the fear?

The leading contenders for the Republican nomination have indicated they will not attend the “All American Presidential Forum” organized by black talk show host Tavis Smiley, scheduled for Sept. 27 at Morgan State University in Baltimore and airing on PBS.

This is the GOP version of the forum I covered live in D.C. with the Dems. Of course none of the candidates say that they don’t want to deal with poc issues, they say they have scheduling conflicts (yeah right). Can you imagine them saying this to a mainstream white audience? It just wouldn’t happen. It just goes to show the extent of disrespect that these candidates feel towards people of color communities. I mean even Newt Gingrich is calling out the GOP on this:

“I hope they will reverse their decision and change their schedules. I see no excuse — this thing has been planned for months, these candidates have known about it for months. It’s just fundamentally wrong. Any of them who give you that scheduling-conflict answer are disingenuous. That’s baloney.”

Are they afraid to answer the hard questions in terms of current and future policy and how they relate to race? Silence really does speak a thousand words.

Via / The Washington Post