Political Hay
Playing the Racism Card
We are “kind of nervous” when it comes to “talking about that.”
It took until March, by which time Senator Obama had been running for President for a full year. But when all those Rev. Jeremiah Wright quotes began to emerge, there was some decorous murmuring about how Americans needed to have a discussion about race.
Yes, but what kind of a discussion?
An answer has begun to emerge. The issue keeps bubbling up, not least in more comments from the Rev. Wright. About left-brain, right-brain distinctions between blacks and whites, for example. To me, that resembled nothing so much as the new phrenology. If Charles Murray, who wrote that notorious book about IQ, had said anything like that, he would have been branded a racist and maybe would be in hiding by now.
The race issue returned soon after last week’s primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. In an interview with USA Today, Sen. Hillary Clinton said that she had a “much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” Citing an AP article, she added:
“Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.” Polls showed “how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
“There is a pattern emerging here,” she said.
“There is indeed a pattern emerging,” replied left wing columnist Joe Conason. “And it is a pattern that must dismay everyone who admires the Clintons and has defended them against the charge that they are exploiting racial divisions.”
Hillary was “channeling George Wallace,” Conason said.
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert also took umbrage.
“To deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.”
Why is it not giving someone a “fair hearing” to draw attention to exit polls showing that he lacks support among certain groups? When the media gleefully drew attention to Ronald Reagan’s “gender gap” when he was running for President in 1984 — a far higher percentage of men than women supported him — was that not giving him a fair hearing? How silly!
p>On Sunday we did hear some commonsense on the issue, from Sam Donaldson of ABC News. On This Week with George Stephanopoulos he said: br>
About the Author
Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and most recently Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (2009).
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