Bill Shaheen's comments that Barack Obama may not stand up to the rigorous scrutiny that is Presidential General election politics has some validity. However it is not the Clinton campaign's insinuation of questions about Barack Obama's drug history that makes him vulnerable to a Republican opponent. It is Barack Obama's Africanity/Blackness in a white supremacist society that is his Achilles' heel. And it took HRC's electoral desperation to open Pandora's box.
And then there is the matter of race. All of the questions about "will white America vote for him?" or "is he black enough?" point to a single reality, which is that race remains a defining issue in American life.
The comments of Clinton New Hampshire Campaign State Chair Bill Shehan are more than an insidious attempt to mount a public whisper campaign about Barack Obama or the malicious attempt to derail his campaign, those remarks are a test.
The comments about Barack Obama's admitted drug experimentation are screens through which to question Obama's character but the added twist of, "Have you given anyone drugs? Have you sold drugs to anyone?" dusts off one of the oldest tests of American politics, the racial fear test.
Be it the scandal of Thomas Jefferson's affair with his slave/sister in law, Sally Hemings, the fear that Abraham Lincoln would force the South to secede by abolishing slavery (ironic), the outrage over Theodore Roosevelt's dinner with Booker T. Washington in the White House, Woodrow Wilson's re-institution of segregation in the Federal government, George Wallace's vow to never be "out niggered again", Nixon's Southern Strategy, Ronald Reagan's (imaginary) Cadillac driving welfare queen, George H. W. Bush's Willie Horton ads and Bill Clinton's Sister Souljah finger wag. Even John McCain was tarred with the miscegenation brush. At crucial moments in American politics, someone finds it necessary to raise the spectre of a candidate's relationship to Black people, in order to, instill fear (Bush's Willie Horton ad) or project the strength necessary to not be "beholden" to Black people (The Sister Souljah debacle).
Yes, I said it. First Guy Bill "Mo Better" Clinton or not, I believe Clinton's campaign wants to create a whiff of race. Nothing so odious as to create smoke clouds that will embarass the Black elected officials that have lined up in support or disrupt the fiction of how good the Clintons are to colored folks but certainly a faint enough echo at the back of the mind that dominos into the worst case scenarios for white voters.
The "did you sell drugs?," part of Shehan's interview was not some odd throw away.
-In a country where 62% of the drug related convictions are of African Americans (80% of the users are white but only 36% of the convictions are of white dealers/users),
-In a country where I have never heard any white public figure accused or prosecuted of drug use, connected with selling drugs,
-In a popular media and cultural consciousness where all drug dealers are Black men (despite the empirical reality of majority white involvement in the drug trade)
-And in what was considered the most disciplined, "textbook" campaign ever seen, all of a sudden the New Hampshire state campaign chairman goes off message in a nuclear way?
I call bullshit, on all attempts to excuse this latest outrage. HRC's apology pales in comparison to the "I'm not saying it but I'm just saying" excuse.
"I’ve been tested, I’ve been vetted," she said. "There are no surprises. There’s not going to be anybody saying, 'I didn’t think of that, my goodness, what’s that going to mean?'"
It's easy to do. Black people are an infinite canvas upon which any fears, concerns, paranoias, anxieties, uncertainties, doubts or obsessions of the racistly inclined white consciousness can be etched. Fear of inter-racial sex, "Harold call me." Fear of the violent Black man, Dukakis' prisoner furlough program. Fear of Black militancy, appeal to the ignorance of the "silent Majority." How many votes did exploitation of the Black Panther Party win for Nixon in 1968? HRC's campaign doesn't have to say Black men are drug dealers or Barack Obama will be cooking up cocaine and baking soda in the White House kitchen but just mix the words Obama+cocaine+sell (repeat ad nauseum) and let racist imaginings do the rest.
So, Bill Shehan, Clinton's former New Hampshire state chair is correct, this is a question that may occur in a general election (damn sure now that HRC's campaign has announced to Republicans that it's a-okay to bring it up). The question, however, is whether or not US voters are smart enough now to not be fooled again. Can the majority of Americans put aside their genetic antipathy to the idea of a person of color holding real power and examine a candidate with fairness? Can voters no longer let race (and sexuality) overwhelm class concerns? Can the majority of US voters avoid capitualting to the ever present boogeymen of US racial consciousness and those who consciously manipulate images? Can they accept the fact that a President Obama would not want to sleep with their daughters? Can for once, American voters not let their irrational pre-occupations overwhelm their rational considerations. I am not saying that Barack Obama should not be critiqued. I am not saying that he is the perfect candidate. I am saying that what HRC's campaign (yes her campaign--fuck that bad apple meme) has done is called into question the ability of American voters to stop victimizing themselves with their own own bigotry and fears. I am saying that American voters cannot continue to make the same mistakes expecting new outcomes. I am saying that regardles of what a leader may say about change if any change is to take place, at root, the people must be the change that the best of this nation's leaders and visionaries have called for.