|
|
|
|
CAMPAIGN OUTSIDER
Black and white and barely read at all
By Muhammad Cohen
Last week, Senator Barack Obama gave the most important speech on race in
America since Martin Luther King shared his dream 45 years ago. But instead of
focusing on Obama's thoughtful words, Americans seem more intent on the sayings
of the preacher Obama denounced.
In speaking fundamental truths about black and white under the stars and
stripes, Obama's speech challenged Americans to prove we want intelligent
debate on key issues. So far, America is failing that test as badly as it has
so many racial trials, preferring simple sound bites that reduce a vivid,
vibrant society to a different kind of black and white. The preference
demonstrates
how badly the political debate in the US has regressed, and how, as Obama
eloquently noted, progress on racial issues has stagnated.
In his speech, Obama "condemned, in unequivocal terms" the sermons of Reverend
Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Wright's top sound bites include a hearty
"God damn America" for its white racism and "for killing innocent people", and
suggesting the September 11, 2001, attacks represented "America's chickens
coming home to roost". Those remarks have become bludgeons against Obama's
campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Playing the granny card
But the Illinois senator also said of Wright, who baptized his daughters, "I
can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped
raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me
as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her
fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one
occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
Wright has retired as a pastor and is not a candidate for president, yet his
angry outbursts are still being aired far more than Obama's nuanced perspective
on race as the child of an African father and a white mother who once lived in
a country with the world's most Muslims (Indonesia). In the speech, Obama
acknowledged resentments on both sides of the racial divide, and urged
Americans to move beyond them to create the more perfect union the US's
founding fathers envisioned.
"We cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together,"
Obama said, "unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have
different stories, but we hold common hopes - that we may not look the same and
we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same
direction."
KISS - keep it simple, candidates
Unfortunately, now more than ever, America prefers the simple to the
thoughtful. Former president Ronald Reagan greatly advanced this ancient school
of politics. Recall his simple question in 1980: Are you better off now then
you were four years ago? In 1984, he didn't even tax your brain for an answer,
presenting the saccharine image of "morning in America". After the complexities
of Watergate, the Arab oil embargo, the fall of Saigon in Vietnam, the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan, and the subsequent Olympic boycott, America was ready
for Reagan's simple answers.
Now, after eight years of Reagan's political heir George W Bush and his simple
but wrong answers leaving a legacy of crises at home and abroad, you'd think
America would be ready to elevate the degree of difficulty. Reactions to
Obama's speech indicate otherwise. Rather than considering the points he makes
about race relations - or, yikes, reading the speech - reactions center around
whether the Illinois senator sufficiently distanced himself from Wright.
It might be that Americans can't handle complexities. Don't underestimate the
capacity of voters to confuse and misunderstand. A poll last week showed most
Americans oppose Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain's policy
prescriptions for Iraq, yet they say he'd do the best job on the issue as
president.
But the reaction to Obama and his speech goes beyond seeking simple answers.
It's about avoiding the honest racial introspection he's asking us to
undertake. Despite Obama's urging to the contrary, Americans would indeed
prefer "to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that
it distorts reality". Make no mistake, race is a key factor in reactions to and
the coverage of Obama's speech.
Parsley chopped liver?
MoveOn.com, the progressive Democratic group, notes the disparity between
attention to Wright's remarks and scrutiny of comments by a pair of white
preachers endorsing McCain. According to MoveOn, Pastor John Hagee says
Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for homosexuality, Jews are to blame
for anti-Semitism, and Catholicism is the "Whore of Babylon" and "a cult". Yet
McCain hasn't disavowed Hagee's support; he remains "honored" and "proud" of
it.
Last month, televangelist Rick Parsley endorsed McCain. In return, MoveOn said,
the Arizona senator called Parsley his "spiritual guide". McCain hasn't
disavowed Parsley's call for holy war: I do not believe our country can
truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict
with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from
its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the
intention of seeing this false religion destroyed ... Tell me,
Reverend Parsley, was it Colin Powell who stopped George Washington at
Yorktown, rather than letting him continue to Mecca?
Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway found a clever way to combine the lowered
tone of political discourse with racism. A couple of weeks ago, when Hillary
Clinton suggested Obama would be a good vice president on her ticket, Conway
told talk show host Larry King that McCain could get on with his general
election campaign while the Democrats "debate whether she should let him ride
in the back of her campaign bus", a reference to the racial discrimination laws
of the American south of a half-century ago.
Conway did not respond to a request to clarify what she called a "metaphor", so
I'll say that this white woman found a way to inject racism into a situation
that had none and attribute it to someone else. Whenever I see minority
supporters of Republicans, I always wonder how they can stomach association
with a party that, at least since days of president Richard Nixon's southern
strategy, has been so quick to play the race card. Even Poppy Bush, who I'll
wager never uttered the N-word in his life, gave us Clarence Thomas on the
Supreme Court and the Willie Horton ad showing black men leaving jail through
Michael Dukakis' revolving door.
'Show me the racism!'
I was shocked that Conway's comment on CNN didn't provoke outrage, but I admit
I don't get the state of race relations in the US. You lost me with the Don
Imus disgrace of just about a year ago. I couldn't understand how anyone could
defend a radio host who called the Rutgers University women's basketball team
"nappy headed hos". Yet a lot of white people I once respected defended Imus,
and not on narrow free speech terms where I'd be compelled to concede they had
a point. They contended that latest slur in Imus' racist chain wasn't that big
a deal, certainly not something that should cost a white millionaire his job.
Somehow, I doubt that if Imus had called any of his advocates' sisters,
partners or daughters "lard-butt honky streetwalkers" or tagged the Yeshiva
University basketball team (either gender) "hooknose Hebe shylocks" that he
would have attracted a similarly rigorous defense. Imus eventually got a richly
deserved pink slip, but he's already found a new home on the national airwaves.
Backlash against political correctness has apparently promoted white racism to
a sign of rugged individualism and original thinking from its former status as
a relic of America's shameful past. It's ironic that, at a time when America
has more racially diversity and mixing more than ever before, racism is making
a comeback.
Whites think the race problem got solved back in the 1960s. Now we've got
affirmative action and a national King Day (although some may confuse it with
celebrating Elvis Presley's birthday) and a black guy running for president, so
America must have buried its racist past, and we don't need to talk about race
anymore.
Or more accurately, we don't need to listen about it. Especially now that
everyone has a cousin in an interracial marriage and a multiracial workplace,
Americans all believe they're experts on race relations with nothing left to
learn. (By age 12, most people feel the same way about sex.) Given their
cheerful coexistence with other races, they couldn't possibly be bigots. With
that inoculation against prejudice, Americans feel they've earned a pass to say
anything they want about race.
When they use this liberty to express themselves, a lot more Americans seem to
favor the easy racial anger and divisiveness of Wright to Obama's more
difficult prescription of understanding and reconciliation. That could spell
real trouble for the one who is running for president.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com),
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
high finance and cheap lingerie.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2008 Asia Times
Online (Holdings), Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
