Race? Why, of Course.

I suggested, a couple of days ago, that the dash for the Democratic nomination and what is said by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the remainder of the campaign should consist of attempts to weaken John McCain’s chances of assuming the presidency next year.  I should have added something else …

Just how much of this remaining dash, or this whole campaign, has to do with Race?

Any American who thinks the race card has not been played in this election is grossly naïve.

Neither Senator Clinton nor Senator McCain has alluded to it — both are far too well versed in American politics to know the lambasting they’ll take if they resort to such tactics, no matter how subtle. The race card has been played by Senator Barack Obama himself; however he has used it in a new way.

He’s made it an assertive.  Anatole Kaletsky, writing in Times Online yesterday made the point that Obama’s tactics have inspired Walter Earl Fluker — executive director of the Leadership Center of Morehouse College and a prominent black American – in the context which is important for Americans to hear.  In so doing, Kaletsky mentioned, by using a quote, that Obama had hit hisKairos moment — his moment of greatest opportunity — in the speech he gave in response to Reverend Jeremiah Wright on March 18^th.

Prominent individuals both white and black have been saying since that the speech is a milestone in the history of America to be quoted in the same breath as the words of Martin Luther King and even Abraham Lincoln.  But Senator Obama’s words, refuting the Reverend’s caustic sermons while at the same time pleading for an understanding of what Wright meant, were generally lost in media coverage. Obliterated.

Example: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” That we heard on TV and read in the mainstream press. But he also said “(I have) a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people — that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds.

Example: how many times did you see quoted, Obama’s remark: “the last weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.  And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners we will never be able to come together.”  If you missed his speech you didn’t get those words from the media.

Example: same speech yet referring to the immigrant experience:  “A similar anger exists within segments of the white community.  Most working and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race –- as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch.”

The American Mainstream media, the Networks; the Newspapers; the weekly periodicals have also brought race into the picture. But they have done so largely by omission.

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Barack Obama did not, as the first truly serious black candidate who has a chance of winning the White House, begin his quest in this election by speaking of his heritage when the campaign started a year ago.  All one has to do is look back to 2004 and his extraordinarily received Keynote address at the Democratic Convention. The first statement out of his mouth, after ”thank you” was “let’s face it; my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was … born and raised in Kenya.”

Later he referred to his own country as being “not a Black America and a White America … there’s the United States of America.”

He referred to “slaves sitting around a fire singing songs of freedom.”  He made references to Latinos and Asians as well. Obama was only too well aware that as he faced the country on that podium, four years ago, his viewers were “seeing” a black face.

Uh huh, this election is about Race.  It is about gender but it is more about race and whether the American voter is willing to place a black man in nomination and later vote for him as president.  It’s hardly the only issue because millions of people will merely acknowledge, in passing, that the Senator is black, as they acknowledge Senator Clinton is female and Senator McCain as elderly.

However, there are Americans of all stripes who have thoughts, mostly unspoken, regarding how they feel about voting for a black man; people in each of the 50 states who would not vote for a black no matter whom he was or how well qualified he may be.

A member of my extended family was a school teacher, a creative, intelligent woman who grew up in The South.  She taught young children in a large elementary school in the State of California. Many were the night she and I sat and talked about a range of subjects: the sciences; the personalities of well-known politicians; characters from the entertainment world, even sports.

She was delightful — but no amount of arguing on anyone’s part could make this aging lady accept the fact that a black person was equal to a white person.  To her, a black was a child of a lesser God. In her classes she treated the “coloreds” exactly the same as white kids “They never knew I was prejudiced.”  But to her they were a sub species.

I knew the pastor of a large church. I had known him for years and he was a hard worker in his parish –  made up of at least 99% white people.  He counseled them as he thought best.  It seemed to me he was well qualified, considering his faith and his experience.

One day we were chatting and he mentioned he needed a new gardener; someone to clip the edges and mow the lawn. It happened I knew a first year college student who needed money to buy himself a car.  I sent him over the see the pastor after calling him saying he may be interested in the guy to do his gardening chores.  

An hour later, I received a ‘phone call.  It was the pastor.  He said: “Cas, that kid would never do … he’s a “darkie”.

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A little key turns in our minds when we meet someone who is from a different race.  After the umpteenth time and the person becomes a friend we don’t really notice.  But it’s there in the beginning.  In all of us no matter what colour we are. 

I think Senator Obama has made that pointedly clear. As John Lennon said in his song: “Come Together”, no matter who this character is: “Come Together, right now, over me.”

Barack Obama is saying “This is your chance. Yes this election is about race, it is also about getting rid of race for race’s sake and putting aside the injurious lessons of the past.

“Who knows when you’re going to get another chance as big as this one”?  

Tags: Barack Obama, election, gender, Hillary Clinton, race