Racing for the truth about Race
by Charles Adler
March 12/08
"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any colour, he would not be this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in this concept." These words were spoken by a retired politician who has been a loyal supporter of Hillary Clinton, having done several fund raisers for her. Geraldine Ferraro is a former Democratic Party Congresswoman who ran unsuccessfully as a vice presidential candidate in 1984. She shared a ticket with Walter Mondale in an eminently forgettable campaign against the Reagan steamroller. One of the few memorable moments for me was the news conference she held shortly after she was nominated in which she spent well over an hour answering questions about a police investigation of her husband. Because of their Italian name, Ferraro was treated by some members of media like she was a member of mob family. Because she was a woman, she was held to a higher standard. There, I have said it. Women who wanted to break the gender barrier in national politics were held to a higher standard. If you were a Margaret Thatcher or a Golda Meir, the door was open. If you were a Geraldine Ferraro or Kim Campbell or Sheila Copps, you were interesting and maybe even compelling. But ..........
Fast forward 28 years and the words of Ferraro could come across to some observers as the sour gas of a woman who feels she was discounted by the media for being a woman and identifies with Hillary Clinton who has been getting similar treatment. Obama, on the other hand, has been getting largely favourable coverage by the U.S. media. A recent inventory of media coverage in the United States, had media giving Obama positive coverage nearly more than 80 percent of the time. Clinton's number was a much more normal 50. It is rare for any candidate to get a number as high as Obama's and Ferraro clearly feels race is part of the reason he is a Democratic Party frontrunner. Is she wrong? Does anyone seriously doubt that Obama, who is one of the most talented speakers to come along since Ronald Reagan, is helped by his African heritage? I haven't spoken to a single American white liberal media person who hasn't mentioned race as being an important if not central reason for their favourable point of view on Obama. In this country, Warren Kinsella told my radio audience in a very blunt and candid way that he thought it was time for the United States to have an African American in the White House. And that was one very big reason for his support of Obama. There were those who emailed me saying that Kinsella, a champion of human rights, was being racist. I am very loathe to hang that kind of noose around a public person's neck. It is tends to choke off rational conversation. Kinsella is no different than American liberals who believe that because of years of systematic discrimination against blacks, having a black man occupy the world's highest office would be a symbol that the United States has turned the page. If I were a knee jerk liberal, there is a good chance I would find myself in the Obama camp. If the black man being discussed was a moderate conservative like Colin Powell, I would likely be attracted to the idea of being a supporter. Is the idea of favoring Powell over Obama loaded with racism? Could the question be any more absurd? Is Kinsella's public rooting for the very liberal black politician, Barack Obama an act of racism? I don't think so. And I don't see how Ferraro can be fairly criticized as racist when she simply says publicly what so many liberals say privately. They, like Kinsella, are rooting for a man who happens to share their values and being black makes the package even better.
What has not received much discussion was Ferraro's accurate assertion that a black man was advantaged over a woman of colour, as she put it. Is she wrong about that. Probably not. If one gets enmeshed with the desire for symbolic change, the symbol of black slavery happens to be male. While women and men were both enslaved, the icons of slavery in the literature we read as children focused on the man. Harriet Beecher Stowe's central character was Uncle Tom, not Aunt Thomassina. The slave character who won Huckeberry Finn's friendship was Jim, not Jane. The most inspiring speech that has ever moved my heart was delivered by a black man named Martin. One of the reasons I have trouble being moved by Obama has nothing to do with his pigmentation or his politics. It is because I do hear echoes of Martin Luther King. But when I heard Martin, I thought I was hearing a black Moses. When I hear Obama, I hear a knockoff of Martin. It aint Moses. It aint workin' on my ears the way it does on many others. Is that a racist reaction? Any spinner working for a political campaign can pounce on any unflattering comment made about a black candidate and brand it that way. There are plenty of media types prepared to carry the water of those who like to use the "R" word. It has been used promiscuously to stifle many conversation in our country. Try having a free and open conversation about immigration, crime and punishment, immigration, or aboriginal issues and very soon somebody puts a cork in it, by deploying the "R" word.
In the United States Geraldine Ferraro is being chastized by the Obama campaign and its supporters as making reprehensible remarks. But in her interview with a Los Angeles newspaper she may have simpy been guilty of speaking truth to media power, without the politically correct envelope of nuance. U.S. media stars who have been lampooned by Saturday Night Live for being groupies of Obama will no doubt gin up some artificial outrage. What's most interesting about this is Hillary Clinton's nuanced response to Ferraro. She said she disagreed with her political sister, which was easy to do. If there is disagreement it is only on the margins. Their hearts are in the same place. And so there was no call on Ferraro to stop campaigning for Clinton . Had Hillary Clinton denounced Ferarro, it would have been the moral equivalent of Bill Clinton's world famous falsehood, "I never had sexual relations with that woman."
Geraldine Ferraro said something intelligent. I can die now.
"The majority of his fan base is made up of black people who are voting for Barack because he's black and guilt ridden white people who are voting for Barack so they can prove to all their friends that they're not racists. (...)
"In other words, if Barack Obama had been white, he'd have been laughed off as too inexperienced to even be running for the job and he'd have been relegated to the bottom of the Democratic pile with Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd."
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