This sounds like Shelby Steele's latest salvo. He claims that the Black leadership has exploited the voting irregularities in south Florida to advance their own political (read elitist) ends and by resorting to the moral language of the earlier civil rights struggles some thirty plus years ago only empties what little moral authority these leaders have. Kind of like moral entrepreneurs suffering the fate of those opposing the TVA.
Skepticism should allow the truth of both tracks - partisan advantage and racial suppression.
Then again, this past election looks a lot like a racial struggle insofar as the Republican Party has asserted itself as protector of white privilege while the voter turnout among Blacks suggests that they saw Gore, rightly or wrongly, as their only defense against an aggressive campaign to sustain the advantages of whiteness. In any event the claim that the battle against racism ended three decades ago seems both wrong and wrongheaded.
Dennis Breslin