That matter of race

Curt Mudgeon

October 2008

One month away from the presidential election, campaigns are raising the tone.  Recently, Governor Palin criticised Mr Obama for his association with Bill Ayers, unrepentant cofounder of Weather Underground and former bomb layer, communist, and tenured professor of Education at the University of Illinois.  It is a meeting at his home in 1995 that started Mr Obama’s political career.  Later, Messrs Obama and Ayers sat on the boards of foundations and organisations dedicated to “social justice,” education, and the improvement of opportunities for disadvantaged communities.  Ayers supported the senator’s campaigns.  The two men appeared together on panel discussions and other events, and as a charity fund board member Mr Obama funnelled substantial money to projects headed by Ayers and other political allies.  The senator, however, describes Ayers as an acquaintance that he met only in board meetings and because he lived in the same neighbourhood.  Mrs Palin’s attack on Mr Obama for the Ayers connection was alleged to carry a “racial tinge,” a non sequitur, but, all the same, a damning accusation. 

In a recent interview, Mrs Palin was again suspected of racist motives for speaking of the need to take a closer look to Mr Obama’s association with Jeremiah Wright, minister of the Trinity United Church of Christ, proponent of Liberation Theology, notorious anti-American agitator, and the senator’s pastor, “mentor, and spiritual adviser” for some twenty years.  Mr Wright’s outrageous antics became known when someone took video clips of his sermons and posted them of the web.  At first, Mr Obama claimed that those were exaggerations intended for impact, that they were taken out of proper context, and that Mr Wright had done much good in his community.  The senator added that in spite of a deportment sometimes a bit immoderate, the reverend was to him like a likeable, eccentric “uncle,” the kind one finds in any family.  He also said that he did not remember hearing any inflammatory rhetoric when he attended church services.  Yet, after the pressure reached a critical point, he finally declared that he disapproved of the pastor’s subversive utterances and left the Trinity United Church of Christ.  In interviews, Mr Wright suggested that his words did not have to be taken quite literally, and that one had to understand the culture of the “black churches” to form a sensible opinion on the subject.  He also hinted that racial prejudice might have motivated the current interest in the goings-on in the Trinity United Church of Christ.  Since racism must be found everywhere by politicians who have made a career of it, Mrs Palin’s use of popular expressions like “Joe Six-Pack” and “hockey moms” has been declared racist by a black US Representative from New York.  Other black elected officials also managed to parse the governor’s words in rather creative ways to find subtle “codes.”

So, the Obama camp keeps pulling the race card.  Should we be surprised?  It started early in the game with the senator’s own straw man about being black and not looking like “all those other presidents on the dollar bills,” thereby intimating that not supporting his candidacy would have to do with his race.  And that followed on the heels of a controversy about Hillary Clinton’s statement that it took a president (Lyndon B. Johnson) “to realise Martin Luther King’s dream.” This statement was interpreted by the Obama campaign as diminishing the black leader’s role in the advancement of civil rights.  The insinuation prompted an angry response on the part of Bill, former POTUS and would-be coPOTUS, whom Toni Morrison had called “our first black president” in a 1998 New Yorker piece.  How relevant is race to the current election?  Independently of the reflexive votes of the black electorate, it is enormously relevant, but not as the usual hustlers of race politics present it.

Does it make sense to believe that the candidate’s empty rhetoric is the reason for all that swooning on the Left and all the passes on questionable associations?  I think not.  Unmentionable as it is, “race” is the reason.  From that viewpoint, Mr Obama’s nomination accomplishes two important objectives.   One is for the Democrats to get a forever lock on the black vote for having nominated the first black presidential candidate in the history of the country.  Any criticism of the party by an Al Sharpton or a Jesse Jackson will be answered with a resounding “Remember 2008!”—an argument difficult to dispute.  The second objective is the Democrats’ hope to free themselves once and for all of the persistent accusations of racism directed at whites, regardless of political affiliation.  This is a high price to pay to rid oneself of spurious guilt, as it would open the door of the White House to a front man of the hard Left. 

There have been estimates that 15%—or more—of the US population would not vote for a black candidate to the presidency.  Should we conclude that still too many people are racist?  Not necessarily.  In spite of claims to the contrary by those who have vested interests in perpetuating the myth of a racist America, we can safely assert that racists are a very small percentage the population, and certainly not 15%.  If so, who would be the other people set against voting for a black candidate, and what would be their motives? 

One does not have to dig very deep to answer these questions.  The root of the problem is that a majority of the black population keeps exhibiting a cultural, racial, and political “groupthink” that likes to take systematically quasi-separatist positions on about anything.  This groupthink has its representatives in Congress, thanks to districts more or less gerrymandered along racial lines.  These politicians are all members of a Black Caucus quick to cry racism whenever it does not get its way or when one of its members is caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  As to self-appointed black leaders, they preach that the societal mess of the inner cities is a matter of cultural incomprehension or intolerance on the part of whites.  Black groupthink keeps finding excuses for the ways of the ghetto, the culture of failure, the base coarseness of hip-hop and rap, the baggy pants, the bling, the general irresponsibility, the drugs, and the high crime rate.   Unfortunately, racial solidarity is strong enough to make a black middle or upper-middle class vote “black” and implicitly align itself with politicians whose interest is to perpetuate the ghetto’s self-segregating and seditious ways.  The few courageous black men who reject the groupthink and whose ideas would truly help bridging the gap between blacks and whites are despised and accused of Uncle Tomism.  To people who are not racist, this groupthink can be a big turn-off that makes any black candidate for high office suspect of racial partisanship.

Periodically, after making an egregiously racist statement, some black politician or self-appointed “community leader” gives excuses, asks for understanding, and proposes that his misstep is a great opportunity for a national “discussion on race.”  This is a sham.  Currently, the only possible discussion on race is that in which whites are blamed for past injustices and for blacks’ current societal dysfunction.  Such a discussion can serve no purpose other than reinforcing the myth of black powerlessness that unscrupulous leaders keep cultivating to their own advantage.  Today’s America offers great opportunities to blacks and to any other racial minority.  Rehashing old grievances and refusing to be an integral part of a color-blind society by applauding the hateful rants of a Jeremiah Wright cannot lead to anything positive.  It is high time to put a stop to the “discussions on race,” revisions of history, political correctness, and forever atonement.  Only such evolution can create a climate of progress in which individual effort and good will can flourish in the black population.  But as long as group politics are perceived as more attractive, the matter of race will remain unresolved.