Race and the (U.S. Presidential) Race

Regardless of which candidate you might favor in this year's U.S. presidential elections, I think it's safe to say that this year's race is turning out to be quite a case study in race and racism that will be analyzed and cited by academics, activists, politicians and pundits for decades to come. Two recent columns in the New York Times help to shed some light on the situation.

Frank Rich focuses on the nature of the increasingly overt racism that has been observed amongst McCain-Palin supporters in recent weeks.

All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.

What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder.

While such instances of overt racism as described by Rich are no doubt having an influence on the election, Nicholas Kristof argues that the type of racism that is really driving this election is much more subtle and, typically, unconscious on the part of the persons who wield it.

The racism is difficult to measure, but a careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white. That’s significant but surmountable.

Most of the lost votes aren’t those of dyed-in-the-wool racists. Such racists account for perhaps 10 percent of the electorate and, polling suggests, are mostly conservatives who would not vote for any Democratic presidential candidate.

Rather, most of the votes that Mr. Obama actually loses belong to well-meaning whites who believe in racial equality and have no objection to electing a black person as president — yet who discriminate unconsciously.

The bottom line is that Barack Obama--America's first black presidential contender--is plagued by race on both sides of the aisle. On one hand, he must confront the shameless racial and ethnic slurs from overzealous McCain supporters. And on the other, he must overcome the invisible, unconscious racism that is deeply rooted in the hearts and minds of those who sincerely believe that they support racial equality. No doubt, the barriers posed by the latter group will me much more difficult to overcome.

UPDATE:Michael Westmoreland-White over at Levellers identifies some additional resources on race and the Bradley effect (or lack thereof) in this year's election.

Race in the Bahamas

Ward Minnis over at Mental Slavery has written an informative post about race in the Bahamas. Too often, we overlook the fact that race is not so much a biological or genetic phenomenon as it is a social construction. If you have any doubts about that, consider for a moment how race is understood in the Caribbean, in general, and the Bahamas, in particular.

Minnis writes:

This color line is tricky. It’s no where near as rigid as the “one drop” rule that governs blackness in the United States. The Bahamian black/white line is a fluid boundary that varies in different islands and even in different settlements / villages on the same island. For example on the same island of Eleuthera, I am read as black in Tarpum Bay and white in Lower Bogue.

More interesting still is how race is often closely linked with national identity. Back when I was studying TESL in Puerto Rico, I had an American classmate who had previously spent five years teaching English in Taiwan. While there, he observed that the English language schools preferred to hire Germans and Swedes rather than African Americans who were native English speakers because they assumed that "real" English could only be spoken folks who were white or, in other words, fit their preconceived notion of what Americans and Brits are supposed to look like. Likewise, Minnis points out how linking blackness with Bahamian national identity has had the reverse effect in the Bahamas.

As it stands the Bahamian identity is constructed as black, ghetto and male. This construction ignores, deliberately I believe, the 20 percent or so of the country that happen to be white. I have inadvertently asked a few white Bahamians “so, where are you from?” It’s polite conversation with a tourist but it’s the surest, most direct way to insult a native . . . To be called white in the Bahamas is another way to say that you do not belong.

You can read the rest of Minnis' post here.