To: Mr. President From: A Black Dude Re: How to My Vote.

• Author: COATES, TA-NEHISI

DEAR MR. BUSH: LIKE MANY AFRICAN Americans, I have been watching your first months in office with skeptical interest, and have concluded that you are the most unpopular president among African Americans since the civil rights movement.

The signs are everywhere. In the 2000 election, you received a measly 8 percent of the black vote--a dubious distinction only surpassed in 1964 by the hated Barry Goldwater, who, of course, lost the election. A poll taken shortly after the election noted that some 8 out of 10 African Americans believed that you were unfairly elected. Another poll found that only 18 percent of African Americans believed that you care about the needs and problems of black people.

Your reception among the emissaries of Ebonica has been equally frosty. At their annual convention in July, NAACP president and longtime civil rights activist Julian Bond accused you of catering to "the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing." Bond compared your cabinet with the Taliban and blasted it as a bunch of Confederate loyalists. All of this must have reinforced the Republican conventional wisdom: Black people hate us, so don't bother going for their votes.

I have no doubt that you are being told that by virtue of divine edict, black people will never vote Republican; that hating conservatives is our birthright; that at least since the 1930s, our foreheads have been stamped "property of DNC." Thus, your party-mates believe that, for as long as the Statue of Liberty presides over Ellis Island and Old Faithful boils in her subterranean home, then sure as clockwork, the black people of this nation will never vote Republican.

But Mr. President, you and your party no longer have the luxury of ignoring us. The Washington Post recently reported that due to the growth in minority populations, if the voting in 2004 goes as it did in 2000, you will lose by roughly 3 million votes. The upcoming congressional races are similarly imperiled, as Republican strategist Bill Dal Col noted: "Going into 2002, we can't have 5 to 9 percent of the black vote ... In the Senate, we have 20 Republicans up [for reelection] in minority-heavy states."

You are clearly aware of these numbers. Since you launched your campaign under the banner of "compassionate conservatism," you have made cursory efforts to court black voters (or at least to placate them enough to keep them from mobilizing against you in large numbers come 2004). You came to the NAACP convention and admitted that your party had not always held aloft the banner of Lincoln. You have pushed the idea of education reform, knowing that African Americans disproportionately suffer from a flawed educational system and have supported the government's minority contracting program. You even kissed Oprah.

But these attempts at garnering the black vote have, thus far, amounted to little more than photo-ops and sound bites, which have also been compromised by your frequent relapses into the racist Republican status quo. That speech at Bob Jones University during the campaign, the nomination of Attorney General John Ashcroft, your perceived glee at executing black criminals in Texas, and your refusal to send Colin Powell to the United Nations racism conference have all undermined your halfhearted attempts to bring African Americans under the GOP's big tent.

Lately, too, it seems your handlers have advised you to ignore black people and make Hispanics the mascot minority for the Republican Party. While I wish you well with this strategy, I still believe that with only 8 percent of the black vote, you should expect plenty of nailbiting come November 2004. Which brings me to why I am writing you.

Mr. Bush, I am here to tell you that you have been hoodwinked, bamboozled, and led astray. As a black quasi-nationalist who would never actually vote for you myself, nonetheless have some insights into the politics of my people that you're not likely to hear from Karl Rove or Karen Hughes. And despite what you've been told, I believe that a significant number of African Americans have never been as ripe for a Republican conversion as they are today.

You see, Mr. President, as we move further into the 21st...