Tonight when I got home, I was perusing these here interwebs taking in the results of Iowa (don’t despair/congratulate any of yourselves yet, folks) and I came across an article published in The Nation that discusses Obama, Race and the Presidency in a way that lays things out better than I could in my previous post that touched on Ron Paul’s racist ass. All of the quotes below are from Ari Melber’s piece that I linked to above.
By the way, I highly recommend reading the entire article.
So I don’t really know who I’m going to vote for when it comes to be Minnesota’s turn. Obama is on my short list, so I was pleased to see him win over Clinton in Iowa. Though I’d love to have a woman in the Oval Office, she’s too economically conservative for me. I digress, however.
Win or lose, he is arguably the first black American to be treated by the political and media establishment as a fully viable presidential contender…We should not gloss over this development. It is a meaningful step towards addressing a resilient, uncomfortable American fact: our national power structure has always been, and stubbornly remains, overwhelmingly white, from all forty-three Presidents across history to ninety-five of the one hundred senators serving today.
When I was listening to Olbermann tonight as I read through the news, I heard either him or Tim Russert say that Republicans don’t think about electability as much as Democrats do when they’re voting. Whoever said it has a point. The higher the profile, the more we Dems are sooo self-conscious. And in politics, as in life, the hesitant are often trampled. The Republicans aren’t any less processed or polled, but even when they contradict themselves or make no sense or are just being complete assholes, they do it with aplomb.
Obama is popular, intelligent, and completely viable as a candidate. If he chooses a running mate with foreign policy experience, he would have a pretty sweet ticket. And despite the fact that he has made history as a candidate because of the sheer amount of money his campaign has brought in (which leads to its viability), despite the fact that I think we should be talking about race, if I hear one more blowhard Dem worrying about Obama’s “electability” as shorthand for “we’re wringing our hands because what if people won’t vote for the black guy?” I’m going to start throwing things at my TV like dear old Grandpa Dan used to when Reagan was on.
Know what? We’re not going to know if America will vote for the black guy or the woman or the white guy or the other white guy or the other white guy or the latino guy or anyone until it happens.
When I was going through my grandfather’s things after my grandma died in 2002, I found a letter that was sent before the 1959 Democratic Convention. From one Irish pol to another. The awe and anticipation in that letter have similarities to what’s going on with Obama now. I’ll look for the letter sometime soon to see if I can find the actual text, but in essence it said: “Do you really think America would vote for a Catholic? Is it really possible? An Irish Catholic!”
It was full of hope. And some fear–that maybe America wouldn’t elect Kennedy. You never can tell before it happens.
Melber goes on:
That segregated power structure was reinforced by the Supreme Court’s sharply divided June decision to ban integration programs in public schools. Most educational policies that consider a student’s race for the purposes of integration are now illegal. Like the original Brown opinion, this year’s decision is not neatly confined to K-12 schools, either. Brown consecrated a new national ambition for racial equality in the public sphere, delegitimizing both explicit and implicit racism in government, and laying a foundation for remedial measures to equalize many other facets of our society. Many critics contend that this case, Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, augurs a disturbing slide backwards. It bans integration programs, sharply restricts race-based government remedies and sets the stage for future bans on other remedial programs, such as affirmative action, as Justice Stephen Breyer warned.
Melber’s argument is that this thinking extends to our treatment of candidates. A reinforcement of “they don’t belong” or “they’re trying to take something away.” You know. Fear-mongering.
Hostility towards affirmative action runs so deep, in fact, it is a staple of attacks against black political candidates. Senator Jesse Helms perfected coded campaign racism in 1990, with an infamous attack ad darkly juxtaposing his black opponent’s face with the text “For RACIAL QUOTAS.”
This next part brings us back to Obama.
Some commentators have latched onto Obama’s success as proof for the flawed claim that the United States has completely achieved equal opportunity for all, obviating remedial programs like affirmative action. “Obama embodies and preaches the true and vital message that in today’s America, the opportunities available to black people are unlimited if they work hard, play by the rules, and get a good education,” writes Stuart Taylor Jr., a columnist for The National Journal (emphasis added). Taylor presents one man’s unusual political arc as a universal lesson for all “black children”: “Obama’s soaring success should tell black children everywhere that they, too, can succeed, and they do not need handouts or reparations.”
Because, well, you know that racial inequality exists because people are lazy. /sarcasm
Thing is, that’s a pretty entrenched idea. I’m betting some people reading this believe that. I could extend this to class mobility as well, but that would just make this post positively book length and it’s already too long. Too bad.
I am going to cut this off though. Please read the article. It’s fantastic. Goes on to talk about Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell and Bush’s Cabinet and the Supreme Court as it goes into the future. Such good stuff.
Good night, folks. Here’s to a long slog through election season.
