On Thursday, President Bush visited Dr. Martin Luther King’s grave in Atlanta on the way to a fundraising event. While the President may have sincerely sought to honor Dr. King on the 75th anniversary of the civil rights leader’s birth, his visit provoked deep skepticism among blacks. As Lance Grimes, a black social worker from Decatur, Georgia, told The New York Times, “‘Bush was not invited . . . It is a desecration for him to lay a wreath at the tomb of Dr. King. He is diametrically opposed to everything Dr. King stood for.’”

For those who have suffered the brunt of Bush’s presidency, a brief fifteen minute visit to MLK’s grave couldn’t excuse the administration’s slighting of minorities the other 364 days of the year. With Bush making little concrete effort to improve the plight of minorities in the U.S. the rest of the year, protesters across the Southeast construed Bush’s visits to MLK’s grave in Atlanta and to a predominately black church in New Orleans on the same day as nothing more than a public relations move.

Last year, right around MLK’s birthday, Bush took a stand against affirmative action in college admissions at the University of Michigan. With the help of the Right’s depiction of MLK as an opponent of affirmative action and a proponent of colorblindness, Bush characterized his agenda as a fulfillment of the civil rights leader’s political vision.

One year later, Bush is at it again, exploiting King’s legacy for his own political gain. Less than ten months before the presidential election, Bush, the self-declared “compassionate conservative,” is still struggling to garner support from blacks and other minorities, who have statistically higher unemployment rates under the Bush administration than whites. Much like Bush’s proposal for immigration reform, which many people—regardless of party line—see as nothing more than a political ploy to win the support of Latino swing voters, Bush’s attempts to honor MLK and appeal to black religious leaders to win support for his faith-based social welfare proposals appeared to be a last-ditch effort to secure votes from black voters. According to The New York Times, only about eight percent of black voters voted for Bush in 2000. Despite a lack of support from racial minorities, polls suggest that Bush would get re-elected if the election were held today. Bush doesn’t want to take any chances, though. If the opposition to Bush’s visits to MLK’s grave and a New Orleans church yesterday are any indication, many blacks don’t seem too keen on taking a chance on Bush either.

Laura Nathan-Garner