WARNING: Super long and personal and rant-rific.
One of the interesting things about this campaign is the embrace of Barack Obama among young people of all genders, races, and religions. Resistance to his campaign has come from older voters and, as Pat Buchanan would say, "ethnically white" women and working class men. For the most part, and until the last few days, race has been mostly sidelined in this campaign (at least publicly). With that in mind, forgive me for being so naive as to continue to think that race did not and would not bother people to the degree that we have seen in the last couple of days. My sincere thoughts were that older voters and the "Pat Buchanan" voters may have hesitated and would continue to hesitate to vote for Obama out of, simply, greater allegiance to the Clinton administration of the 1990s and to Hillary Clinton individually. That when it came down to the general election, there may be 3-4% of Democratic voters who would be turned off by Obama's race but that ultimately Democrats would embrace him and his running mate in their quest for the White House.
It simply did not occur to me to think of Barack Obama as an affirmative action candidate. I have never really wondered what advantages Obama would have had in this race if he were white. Or the advantages he would have had earlier in his career if he were white. It seems like such a preposterous thing to assume, if for no other reason than the simple fact that he wouldn't be who he is if he were he white. I wouldn't be who I am if I were a woman from Peru. Ultimately, the entire logic of trying to determine whether or not Obama would be better or worse off if he were white is, in itself, ridiculous and profoundly depressing - instead of deciding whether or not he is a proper candidate for office, we are forced to first imaginatively remake him into the mold of past presidents and compare him with the likes of James Polk and Herbert Hoover. It reflects an underlying mindset of many Americans, a mindset that seeps into opinions about immigration, foreign policy, education, everything - being "American" means being a white person.
Let me say that I am not a naive idealist who believes that all races are one and we are colorblind and tomorrow we will live together in harmony and peace. I did not go to Montessori school and I did not grow up in a multi-cultural community. No, I grew up in a small, rural, almost all-white town in Northern Indiana. There was even the KKK, though I was not exposed to it. Tom Metzger (know him?) came from my town. Graduated high school in the same class as my uncle. I didn't even know who he was or that he came from my town until a few years ago.
I give my parents credit for never once conveying anything remotely racist to me when I grew up. My father was involved in the community as an educator and was friendly with the black community. We would go to MLK Day cookouts. There were a few black families in our church. And of the few black students at our school, I was friendly with most but not best friends with any of them. It never occurred to me to not be friends with them because they were black, nor did it occur to me to go out of my way to befriend them for the same reason. I never even heard a racist epithet until I was probably in middle school, and even then, it always seemed to be in a joking or deliberately offensive, intentionally provocative kind of way. Once, I remember that my sister was home from college with her best friend, who was biracial. In the morning my sister went out to her car and noticed that it had been soaped - across the windshield was written the phrase "n*gger lover." She and I washed it off before her friend could see it. I'll never really forget that, but even long after it occurred, I chalked it up to somebody being an ass and trying to be provocative instead of as a threat or as real racism.
I remember too when I was in college, a place where one (hopefully) grows from the person that they were in high school, where they begin to reflect on the place in which they grew up and the manner in which they grew up and with whom they grew up; and it was in that ruminative state that I began to wonder why my parents seemed to deviate from the norm in certain ways from others in the small town in which I grew up. What, exactly, were their perceptions and ideas of race? We had never had an explicit conversation on the matter. I assumed they were relatively progressive when it came to race but maybe they were just hiding from me their cold, dark hearts of hate. So, I asked them. Specifically, I asked my father.
I'll never forget our conversation. My father, who has lived in the same small town in Indiana his entire life, started by saying that he never saw any racism is the town or with his neighbors (not very many neighbors - he grew up on a farm) when he was young. He didn't think it was an issue. Well, of course I didn't find that sufficient, so I kept mining for details. No racism? Home of Tom Metzger? A local branch of the KKK? 1950's Indiana? Seriously, no racism? And it was only after some regrettable prodding on my part that my father's face turned ashen. He paused and began rubbing his hands together, and as he stared at the floor, he told me the story of his best friend, Bill Lawrence, who was the same age as my father, who lived at the next farm over, and who was black. They would do chores on their farms in the morning and in the afternoon, and in the evening, they would get together and play in the forest, or in the creek that separated their properties. They would listen to the radio and they would eat at each others' houses. When they were 13, they were involved with the local Boys Club basketball team. My father and Bill would go into town together and practice, then come home and play at night on a hoop nailed to the side of a barn. Finally, in the middle of the summer, they were to take their first trip to play against a team in Kokomo, a town in central Indiana close to Indianapolis.
So the boys got on the bus, they traveled to Kokomo, they played their game against the rival Boys Club team, took showers, and then hopped back on the bus. The coach got on and gave the boys some good news - since the game didn't go very long, they had a little extra time to do something fun - go to a public pool. This was a novelty for the boys and, luckily, they had been warned in advance by their coach that this was a possibility, so that all of them had brought swimsuits or at the least shorts that could double as swimsuits. It was the middle of July, hot and humid, and most of the boys had never seen, let alone swam in, a pool before. So the bus drove to the public pool and the coach got off to coordinate payment and logistics at the ticket office. When he returned, he told the boys that they had two hours to swim, and to have fun. Then he said, in a more somber voice, that he'd like to speak to my father and Bill after the other boys departed the bus.
So my father and Bill waited. And when the other boys had left and it was just the coach and my father and Bill, sitting together in the cramped quarters of a bus seat, the coach calmly and apologetically stated that the pool did not allow blacks to swim in it, and that he would stay with Bill for the hour while the other boys swam, and that he would appreciate it if my father would also stay to keep Bill company.
Which he did. He sat next to Bill while his friend cried, sobbed, for the entire hour. The coach sat in the front of the bus and read a magazine. My father says that he will never forget that time. That he had only two thoughts swirling in his mind, both full of anger, but each directed at a different target. He was angry, principally, at the people who could and would prevent his friend from swimming in a pool with everyone else. And secondary to that thought was an anger directed at his parents, at his coach, at all the adults he had ever known - he was angry that no one told him he shouldn't have been friends with Bill.
No one told him he shouldn't have been friends with a black boy.
What does that have to do with Ferraro? Nothing, everything. What Ferraro said was not, in and of itself, completely racist or even offensive. It may be true that Obama has benefited from being biracial, post-racial, international, unifying, positive, conciliatory. It benefits his worldview, his background, his efforts, his drive. No, what is racist and offensive have been her increasingly misguided attempts to defend her words, the defense of the ideas represented by those words, the defense that other Clinton supporters have also mounted on behalf of her words. The idea that Obama has no qualifications, has done nothing to deserve his success, that he is being unfairly rewarded simply because of his race, that it is Obama who is unfairly antagonizing white people, that in fact Obama should be VP, that Obama needs to remember his place.
These ideas are patently absurd, and obviously overlook Obama's amazing campaign so far. Perhaps it is only because he is black that he has out-strategized Clinton, out-organized her, out-fundraised her. Perhaps it is because he is black that people appreciate the fact that he has been against the war, that he does not accept money from lobbyists, and that seems like a decent, intelligent human being instead of an arrogant sociopath hell-bent on gaining power. How could people possibly think that Obama is getting more votes because he is black? If you are a person who truly thinks that way, then please, come visit me - I live in central Ohio and would be more than happy to take you to the local Bob Evans. You can ask the people there how enthused they are at the prospect of a black candidate named Barack Hussein Obama.
The Ferraro comments and the defense of her comments by Clinton supporters are the most depressing thing that has happened in this race. My naive little image of America as a place where racial resentment has seen it's time come and gone, is shot. There are actually a large number of people - a large number of Democrats - who agree with Ferraro! What the hell! What the goddamned hell!!
The festering racism is still there. Black people are still not considered "real" Americans. If they achieve success, it is not because they deserve it but rather because white people felt like it was acceptable to give it to them. If they take offense at being called an affirmative-action candidate, it is not because the idea is ridiculous, but rather because they are racist against white people. If they win 90% of the black vote, it cannot be seen as proof that their opponent deliberately engaged in a campaign of race-baiting, but rather further proof that black people are the real racists. (??) These ideas are destroying the Democratic Party. Make no mistake about that. They are poison in the pot, they are nothing but a loud and resounding affirmation of this country's worst attributes. And they are on display and coming out of the mouth of the 1984 VP candidate of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
The saddest thing is that this thought came from a Democrat and seems to be a prevalent thought among Democrats. I have to now admit to myself that America may not be ready for a black president. I did not see this coming. I did not realize that so many people thought this way. There just may be too much hostility to the idea of a successful black man in this society. It is a reminder that this is a society where there is still great economic inequality that cuts across gender, race, and geography. Ultimately, it is a society in which it is just too goddamned easy to pit people against each other by spouting nonsense.
I know, I know, it's an incredibly selfish idea. I, the 28 year old white guy with a college degree, is somehow disappointed and let down and aggrieved that the world isn't perfect. Well, so what? I'm pissed off. I'll be a happy man when this era of racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious bigotry finally dissipates to the point where we can judge people on their merits and not attribute every failure or success of a person's career on the color of their skin. I am hopeful that my generation seems to be moving in that direction. And I will work to achieve that state and I hope to God that Obama or Hillary Clinton or Al Gore or someone can make sense of what is happening and remind us not of our failures as a society but of our successes. I hope that in some odd way this strange episode can be turned into something positive and that we can start to work to heal these fresh wounds - not just the blacks that are obviously hurt by these comments, but also the white people who seem to cling to some sort of irrational idea that black people get all the breaks.
I'm reminded of my father's words. I know they are selfish words. Deeply selfish and cowardly. I know they are hyperbolic and that the views of Ferraro are not representative of the majority of the Democratic Party. But dammit, this morning, it's precisely how I feel. I am angry. I feel duped, and at the same time, just immensely powerless.
No one told me I shouldn't get my hopes up for a black man to be President.