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“Race” is a Four-Letter Word
by Paul Hogarth‚
Mar. 19‚ 2008
Under fire for controversial statements by his long-time pastor that could frighten white America, Barack Obama gave a speech yesterday to bring his presidential campaign back on track. We’ve seen this game before: a liberal politician is subject to race-baiting attacks that endanger his electoral prospects, and so takes action to assure “swing voters” that he’s acceptable. Usually, that means throwing the problem under a bus – pandering to the white Joe Six-Pack while alienating his black liberal base. That would have been the “smart” thing to do, but Obama proved that he’s a lot better than that. While he repudiated Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s inflammatory comments, Obama refused to disown him – and over the course of 37 minutes publicly tackled our nation’s biggest taboo like no serious White House candidate has ever done. For that reason, yesterday’s speech was historic.
While the response was mainly positive, talking heads couldn’t help saying that Obama didn’t do what a presidential candidate is supposed to do. He may have denounced the more extreme statements that Pastor Wright made, but did not turn him into another Sister Souljah. How will Obama get white males in Pennsylvania – which the Washington Post in its Beltway wisdom says will pick the next President – not see him as another Jesse Jackson, dooming his campaign?
“As imperfect as he may be,” said Obama, “[Rev. Wright] has been like family to me. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” And at that point, Obama told America what most white people try to avoid – race matters, and there are raw emotions behind Pastor Wright’s words that most African-Americans can relate to, and are deeply rooted in our society.
In 1993, Bill Clinton dumped the nomination of his law school friend Lani Guinier to the Justice Department – after Republicans took the black professor’s controversial ideas about race and called her a “quota queen.” In 2006, Harold Ford tried to become the first black U.S. Senator from Tennessee – by pushing far right on social issues to get the Bubba vote. Despite such pandering, Ford lost in a very Democratic year after a vicious race-baiting campaign. Now he runs the anti-progressive Democratic Leadership Council.
The trouble with pandering to white racial fears is that it alienates your black liberal base. Obama has engendered great enthusiasm among African-American voters, and to simply throw Pastor Wright under a bus – the “safe” route – would have been devastating to his appeal. Playing the Clinton triangulation game wasn’t going to work, but at the same time Obama could not be typecast as the next Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. If you want to be elected President, you have to get a majority of the electorate to vote for you.
Obama did so by squarely addressing racial resentment that blacks and whites each have – but rarely talk about it outside their separate communities. “Race” is a four-letter word – and in our sanitized, “politically correct” society, white people don’t publicly say what they really feel. Geraldine Ferraro’s offensive statements about Obama were disturbing precisely because they revealed what a lot of white, working-class people truly think about affirmative action. And it’s a symptom of a larger problem.
I was particularly moved when Obama said that he could no more disown Rev. Wright as he could disown his white grandmother – “who on more than one occasion uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.” My white grandmother was born and raised in India when it was a British colony, and later lived in South Africa under Apartheid. Until she passed away, it was always something that made me feel uncomfortable - but I couldn't disown my grandmother.
But how would other white people react to Obama’s speech – especially those who would be more inclined to vote for Hillary Clinton or John McCain out of latent racial fears?
Obama squarely addressed the economic anxieties of white working-class voters, and how it has led to racial resentments. “Like the anger within the black community,” he said, “these aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze.”
Obama’s attempt to bring blacks and white working-class voters together in a “class-based” coalition has been tried many times before by progressive politicians. Jesse Jackson did it with his Rainbow Coalition in 1988 – but race is so prevalent in America today that it has never been truly successful. Progressives have good reason to doubt whether Obama’s speech would be any different, because it has been tried before.
But Obama concluded that if we don’t talk about race, politicians will continue to pull the race card every election cycle – and we’ll be talking about the same issue but a different set of players in four years. “The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society,” said Obama. “It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made. But what we know – and what we have seen – is that America can change. What we have achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”
Obama avoided talking about race for much of this election – because he did not want to be defined as this year’s “black” candidate. But race is such a factor in our society that it was inevitable for him to give a speech like this. What was truly remarkable is how he chose to address it – by admitting that it’s a four-letter word, and that we’ll continue to live in a vicious cycle if we don’t confront resentments from both sides of the divide.
And for that reason, Obama’s speech was historic.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In his spare time and outside of regular work hours, Paul Hogarth volunteered on Obama’s field operation in San Francisco.
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