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QUESTIONS ABOUT RACE AND VOTING
09/16/2008
It's very possible that the deciding factor in this election will be race.
I didn't think so at first. I hoped we had moved past that, but the reality is, if you look at the electoral map, John McCain is beating Obama nearly two to one in the Southern States, where racism is still blatant. In West Virginia, where Democrats should win, Obama is losing. This is a state, along with Pennsylvania, where many primary voters said race played a large role in their vote.
And it doesn't take a genius to see the race baiting that is going on in John McCain's ads. Obama is made to look darker skinned than he is, and quite sinister, is portrayed as a wolf stalking Sarah Palin, and is falsely characterized as perverted in his vote in favor of protecting children from sexual predators. This is the old stereotype, the one that got Emmett Till brutally killed, the one that led to hundreds of lynchings in the South: the black man as hyper-sexualized predator who is after your women. Remember the Harold Ford "call me" ad with the white woman bare-shouldered woman? These ads are more of the same and are likely to get worse.
And the choice of Sarah Palin helps McCain in that it gives voters, who are afraid to admit their racism by voting against Obama, a reason to vote for McCain. They can soothe their consciences as they vote for the inferior candidate by rationalizing that he has brought a non-traditional candidate onto the ticket. See? These people aren't prejudiced. They think someone other than a white man belongs on a presidential ticket. They're voting for a woman!
This both sickens and maddens me. Barack Obama is a loving husband, father of two girls, highly educated, enormously gifted, an incredibly empathic man who sees all Americans as the same, and by far the superior candidate, yet he could lose this election simply because he has dark skin, and a sufficient number of Americans still retain the racism of their fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers.
In a year where Republicans should be despised by all but the most loyal and hard core Republicans and fundamentalist Christians, who vote only on the basis of abortion and homosexuality, Obama should be winning by a landslide.
But he isn't.
He's a great candidate and a great speaker. He inspires young people and he has captured the votes of the educated and intellectual classes in the country. And he is right on the issues.
But he can't make good inroads into the uneducated, blue collar workers, the ones who polling shows still retain good old boy hatred of and condescension towards blacks, the ones who feel inferior but assert their superiority based on the color of their skin.
I wish I knew a way to reach these people. I wish there were some magic words that would help them wake up to the inhumanity of their prejudices.
I wish I could give them some instant psychotherapy where they would have an "aha moment" wherein they realize their deep seated insecurities lead them to look down on some in order to feel okay about themselves, and that their prejudice is thus totally irrational. But we're talking about attitudes and beliefs that have existed in this country since the 1600's. We're talking about people whose grandparents and great grandparents saw black people as possessions to buy and sell.
These people's minds are not easily changed.
If I thought they might listen, if I thought they had the tiniest bit of doubt about their beliefs, this is what I would say to them:
George W. Bush and the Republican Party have destroyed much of what used to be good about this country.
They have turned energy policy over to the big oil companies and screwed the little guy with a rise in gasoline prices from $1.50 a gallon in 2000 to $4 a gallon today.
They started an illegal and immoral war against a country that had not attacked us and were vague enough about the reasons that at the start of the war a majority of citizens not only falsely believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but that he was responsible for 9/11.
They are responsible for the deaths of over 4000 of our fighting men and women in a war that should never have been fought.
They have ignored vital parts of the Constitution, completely dismissed the authority of the Congress, spied on their own citizens, and tortured prisoners.
Through tax breaks, they have encouraged companies to ship jobs overseas. They failed to encourage the development of alternative energy which would have created hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
They deregulated vital industries that pursued a business strategy of pure greed, looked the other way while the greedy robbed the middle class, and thus are responsible for the current meltdown in the economy.
They took the surplus that they inherited from the Democrat Bill Clinton and turned it into the largest deficit in the history of the country.
They would have privatized Social Security if the Democrats hadn't stopped them.
Then I would remind them that John McCain and Sarah Palin are members of the Republican Party, the party that is responsible for all these messes, and they still want to privatize Social Security.
And I would ask them the following questions:
Is it more important to you that a black man not be elected president than it is to strengthen the economy?
Is it more important to you that a black man not be elected president than it is to restore our Constitution, the law of our land?
Is it more important to you that a black man not be elected president than that gas prices return to a reasonable level?
Is it more important to you to keep a black man out of the White House than to keep your Social Security in safe hands?
Is it more important to you to keep a black man out of the White House than it is to stop a war that is robbing our treasury and destroying our military?
Do you really believe that a 72 year old man, a man who says he does not understand the economy, a man who changes his positions whenever it is politically expedient to do so, would make a better president than a 46 year old man who is a Constitutional lawyer, is consistent on the issues, and favors policies that help people, just because the older man is white?
Do you believe that a 72 year old man who lies continually and despicably about the black man, about himself, and about his vice presidential candidate is more ethical and deserving than the black man who does not lie?
Are your racial biases more sacred than the future of this country?
Are your racial biases more important than the safety and the prosperity of your children?
Are your racial biases more important than the future of the planet?
What are you afraid of?
What harm would come to you if you saw all people – light skinned and dark skinned - as equals?
How can you possibly refuse to accept, in the year 2000, that a black man is a human being, the same as you, as sacred as you in the eyes of God, equal to you in the law, and as qualified to be president as any white man?
Are you really willing to condemn your children to a life of poverty, poor health care, and no secure retirement, because the person that wants to give that to your children is a black man, and the person that would take it from them is white?
UPDATE: I've been reading and hearing about a lot of so-called "Christians" including Catholics who normally believe in civil rights and social justice (unlike some other "Christians")saying they will not vote for a black man for president.
Well, here's a few questions you could ask them:
How do you think God would look upon your opposition to a candidate based only on his skin color?
Do you believe African Americans are human?
If you believe they are human (and you are an intelligent person so you know about DNA and all that) then you also must believe that they are children of God, just as you are. Do you really think God would look kindly on your hatred of one of his children just because that child's skin is darker than yours?
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