By Tom Bethell on 5.14.08 @ 12:08AM
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!
On Sunday we did hear some commonsense on the issue, from Sam
Donaldson of ABC News. On This Week with George
Stephanopoulos he said:
"Senator Obama has to solve the problem he had in the
primaries, the big states, from the standpoint of white men, and
white women. Now when I say this, we are looking at the analysis of
the exit polls, not just ABC's, but everybody's, and it's a fact.
Of course, I hope nobody is going to accuse me of being a racist.
When she [Hillary] says it -- we just played it -- 'Ha! She's
playing the race card.' It's a fact, folks, and Senator Obama knows
it. And his people are working on that."
Two weeks earlier, on
Meet the Press, we heard a
remarkable and contrasting comment from Gwen Ifill, who hosts a PBS
program of journalists who for some reason always seem to form a
clubby mutual admiration society. Here she is on Tim Russert's
pow-wow
"It also obscures a, a more fundamental problem which
is coming up in this campaign, we are all looking for ways, in our
way, to talk about race in the campaign. But what the, the numbers
have shown us, the exit polls have shown us in the last week is
that what we don't want to talk about is racism, which is, I think,
a, a, a real issue. The people who said they -- that race mattered
to them, a lot of them voted for Hillary Clinton. I'm not calling
the voters racists, but I think, at some point, we have to get back
to a word that we're very scared of using in our society, which is
the reason why people vote against someone because of their race is
not a positive reason, it's a negative, and racism is a negative
quality. We have to find some way to embrace talking about that in
our coverage, and we're kind of nervous about that."
Well yes, Gwen, you're right. We are "kind of nervous" when it
comes to "talking about that." And there's a reason.
On May 1, Robert Siegel, the host of NPR's "All Things
Considered," said that according to exit polls in the Pennsylvania
primary, 12 percent of all voters had said that race was a factor
in the way they voted. The racial breakdown was: 15 percent of
white voters, and "nearly one third" of blacks voters who said that
race was a factor.
So by these figures, and Ifill's analysis, it seems that blacks
may be twice as racist as whites.
Put another way, why is it okay for Obama's supporters to tout
the high percentage of African-American votes he is receiving -- 90
percent in North Carolina -- but not okay for Hillary's supporters
(and Hillary herself) to mention his relatively low percentage of
white votes (40 percent in Indiana and North Carolina)?
Liberals feel entitled to accuse Hillary of playing the "race
card" for drawing attention to the voting preferences of whites.
Meanwhile, the voting preferences of blacks is touted as one of
Obama's great strengths.
My guess is that when the mainstream media say it is time for a
discussion about race, what some of them really want is to start
leveling accusations of racism.
Do we really want to go down that road? Based simply on voting
preferences? I would advise against it. There's a saying: "What is
sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."
topics:
Hillary Clinton, Mainstream Media, NATO, Africa
