The Race Card

From the Board, at the New York Times yesterday afternoon:

Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain on the ploy, saying, quite rightly, that the Republicans are trying to scare voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills.’’
But Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, had a snappy answer. “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.’’
The retort was, we must say, not only contemptible, but shrewd. It puts the sin for the racial attack not on those who made it, but on the victim of the attack.
It also — and we wish this were coincidence, but we doubt it — conjurs up another loaded racial image.
The phrase dealing the race card “from the bottom of the deck” entered the national lexicon during the O.J. Simpson saga. Robert Shapiro, one of Mr. Simpson’s lawyers, famously declared of himself, Johnny Cochran and the rest of the Simpson defense team, “Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck.”
It’s ugly stuff. How about we leave Britney, Paris, and O.J. out of this — and have a presidential campaign?

http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/say-what-john-mccain-barack-obama-and-the-race-card/


I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by how ugly this election is getting -- we certainly do not live in a "post-racial" time, as some pundits and intellectuals like to claim. And I think things are going to get much worse. The reality is that Blacks in this country make less, live shorter lives, get worse healthcare (even when they have comparable income to whites, and sometimes from the same doctors), are thrown in jail at a much higher rate (often for minor drug offenses), have much higher drop out rates and college graduation rates, lower wealth, higher unemployment, etc.

And yet we are not allowed to "play the race card." The truth is it was a racist ad and like many Republicans before him, McCain appears to be taking the low dirty road that started with Nixon and the Southern strategy and has now continued unabated for 40 years. I think it is relevent that Obama is Black; as relevant as the fact that McCain is old, mean, often aloof and uninformed and has a penchant for outbursts at anyone who disagrees with him (including other Senators). The difference is I believe Obama being Black is a good thing; the opportunity to have a president who fits into the mold of past presidents with his Ivy League degree and successful past, but may bring a perspective the office has yet to see -- one that could lend itself to profound change in Washington (though there are certainly no guarantees).

One other point to make about the ad: it juxtaposes Obama with two young, famous white girls. The subtext that has not been discussed is at the very heart of racist white male fear from the past -- that a verile slave or ex-slave would rape their women (or alternatively, that their women might choose him over them). I'm not sure if this is the intention of the makers of the ad, but it wouldn't surprise me if they recognized that this might be a secondary affective response among the very white men they are attempting to again pull to their side.