Twenty-four years ago, when I was a young woman studying abroad, I made a call home from a pay phone on a busy Madrid corner and heard that you had been chosen to run as vice president. I can recall even now how absolutely elated I was -- how I waved friends over to share the news, brimming with happiness about the historic shift I hoped it symbolized for the country and for me as a young woman about to begin my own professional journey.
Now, I am writing to try to communicate to you how your recent assertions that Barack Obama is "very lucky" to be Black, and that if he were a white man "he would not be in this position," can be both inaccurate and racist without your being a racist. Of course you know that as a public figure your words circulate beyond the arena of your intent. You must realize, too, that your intent seems painfully unclear because you've chosen to reiterate and sharpen your comments rather than to contextualize or apologize for them.
It's worth rehearsing why it is hard for many to understand why being African-American can be considered advantageous when compared to being white. White median net worth is 14 times black net worth (largely because of post-World War II entitlements and discriminatory housing patterns). Black men make up just 33% of the about 40 percent of college age African-American students studying for degrees. (White men make up about 46% of white undergraduates). Black representation in business, politics and education is disturbingly low. Look, for example, at the Senate, where Barack Obama is the sole African-American member and only the third to be elected since Reconstruction, that is, in a 125 years. (A still too small number of women, 16, all Anglo-American, serve in the Senate today). Now, as the country faces a housing melt-down, the subprime loan crisis impacts African-Americans (and Latinos) at higher rates. We are 3 to 4 times more likely to have subprime, high interest, loans. In daily life, in Maryland, for example, all drivers seem to run lights and speed about equally, but a whopping 72% of those stopped and searched for traffic violations are Black (Blacks make up about 28% of the state's population). And when it comes to the larger health tragedies, like cancer, Blacks in this country are 30% more likely to die of that disease than are whites. Black women are almost 80% more likely to suffer from a fatal stroke than our white counterparts. In the U.S. Black infants are more than twice as likely to die before they turn one than are white children. Obama is advantaged because he happens to be Black?
Your comments exist in a larger context, not only in the context of your past work, or in the context of the contest for the Democratic primary -- and it would display great grace and maturity to acknowledge this. Saying that a Black man has it "easy"" resonates with anti-affirmative action implications -- no matter your record on that program. Saying such things in this climate makes Black people's jobs and lives harder. It makes it harder for me not to look like someone who had it "easy" and is "very lucky to be who I am," when I grew up on public assistance and got my first job when I was 12, before going on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College and then becoming someone blessed enough to teach inspiring young people at a liberal arts college in Los Angeles. More importantly, your assertions play into attitudes that discount the continued structural discrimination Blacks face when they -- like others in this country -- are trying desperately to make ends meet and to keep themselves and their children safe and healthy and in schools where they can learn and succeed.
We hear rhetoric that dismisses our reality from the Republicans -- there's no reason to hear it now from Democrats. There's no reason to make divisive assertions when the party is trying to unite across race and class and region to address concrete problems of job loss, rising student debt, inaccessible health care, poverty and global warming. This is no time be stubbornly, inaccurately, defiant when Democrats could be coming together to create green jobs, to end a war in Iraq that should have never been waged, to rejoin the global community in addressing our shared challenges, and to celebrate and encourage young people's new engagement in our political process.
Let's address reality. Public figures must recognize that words matter. We can acknowledge your contributions and also condemn the insensitive and a historical assertions you seem so eager to reaffirm. The two are not mutually exclusive. Giving you the opportunity to align your recent comments with the advocacy you trumpet is quite far from first amendment censorship. Indeed, your recent assertions and accusations -- and the vigor with which you defend them -- dishonor the spirit of change that these historic campaigns should embody.
I write to ask that you acknowledge that your comments are both hurtful and divisive.
I have the audacity to hope that you will.
http://obama.senate.gov/news/050626-when_it_comes_to_race_obama_ma/
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/washington/24obama.html?_r=1&sq=obama%20third%20senator%20reconstruction&st=nyt&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&scp=10&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1205814418-c8BhsJNXK3fLbHSn/StHLQ
Geraldine Ferraro is an elderly woman that has spent her life working for liberal goals. To eviscerate her for one remark, which Barack apparently agrees with, is unnecessarily harsh. Obama & his supporters can make their case for his presidency without trashing this poor woman.
But there is a major difference in a pastor preaching to and trying to inspire, motivate, challenge and otherwise "shake up" the cobwebbed thinking of a congregation that might feel entitled to feel victimized, complacent, and oppressed. To get them on their feet and into streets, and colleges, statehouses and the hallowed hall of government. To make them take charge of their own destinies, and stop waiting for the world to change around them. To make them see they are the ones they've been waiting for. Freedom comes to those who take it.
Ferraro's comments, regardless of her explanations, were not designed to do anything other than put down the man -- the black man -- with the audacity to not only challenge her friend but with the unmitigated gall to best her time after time -- 29 times to be exact. Ferraro, the feminist, is angry that even after 25 years, a woman has not yet ascended to the "throne." If there was "motivation" for women to work harder to get elected, I didn't hear it in her comments. If, as she claims, she was "celebrating" that African Americans are overwhelmingly supporting a candidate for President this year who happens to be black, I didn't hear that in her comments either. What I heard was anger. And the pitiful charge of reverse racism. "They're picking on me because I'm white." Not because what she said was, well, dripping with racism.
When I heard Rev. Wright, I heard nothing shocking or implausible or new -- and maybe this is because I had heard everything he said before, over my family's dinner table, or at my grandmother's, or great aunts' and uncle's homes: stories about growing up or living through the depression, growing up on a farm in South Carolina bought and paid for with hard-earned money achieved by my great-grandparents post slavery, or on a small hardscrabble, dust blown farm/ranch in Oklahoma where my grandmother and her siblings were sent went their parents died one right after the other while the children were way to young to fend for themselves. Stories about Jim Crow and crackers (not the edible kind), worries about the Klan. Stories about watching out for unscrupulous doctors and mystery illnesses, about policemen with secret rooms and thick phone books and rubber hoses. and southern trees bearing strange fruit. When you learn about what happens in the backrooms and the dark, with the wink and nod lawyers and doctors, mayors, and governors, you can be suspicious of Presidents and governments who promise one thing and deliver no thing.
That so many white commenters were "appalled and shocked" at what the Rev. said speaks directly to the state of America. That so many of those same people were willing to give Ferraro the benefit of the doubt says something, too.
We live in very separate worlds. To hear the Scarboroughs, Buchanans and Beck and Hannitys tell it, to be an American patriot means you get up each morning and put on your flag pin, say the Pledge, sing the Star Spangled Banner -- an anthem most Americans don't know the words and can't carry the tune -- and you repeat the mantras that "everything changed on 9/11" and "all Muslims hate us." You have to believe that the US has never done anything wrong that might cause our reputation to be tarnished. You believe like any "good US American" that you should be proud of your country 24/7/365 because nothing is ever wrong with America. In their eyes, Ferraro said everything right and Wright was 100% wrong.
How is it, I wonder that the talking head and some of you can be deaf to the rantings of Christian conservative ministers who don't blink an eye when they blame their fellow citizens bringing God's wrath in trials and tribulations like AIDS or hurricanes or earthquakes or fires or train derailments or building collapses. They wish certain people are struck down dead, assassinated or sent to Hell. You don't mind when "conservative" politicians make a beeline to be "anointed" as conservative enough by them. You can rally 'round them when they blame the other folks for their problems: "Why they just need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Just like my folks did when they came to this country." You all conveniently forget that steerage is like first class when compared to the Middle Passage.
So there is a linkage between Rev. Wright and Geraldine Ferraro. Both grew up in America at about the same time. Ferraro, in spite of not being born male and Anglo-Saxon Protestant was "lucky" enough to be born white.
One out of three ain't bad.
Anyway, I appreciate your comments and insight. What some folks don't realize is that the Jeremiah Wright issue is localized, i.e. it speaks to Barack's religious background. Ferraro's comments are a larger statement, and status check, on what many Whites (those who are co-signing on her statement) feel about Black progress and achievement in the US.
I could give a fig about the Rev. Wright issue. I think Barack has to fight his way free of that one, I'm out of it.
On the Ferraro issue, I think it's important that we examine the attitude that leads middle-class Whites to feel that Blacks, especially educated Blacks, are somehow unaffected by White racial prejudice. I'm especially disturbed because I belong to multiple ethnic communities and many in the Asian community take a much more rigid stance in terms of Affirmative Action and frequently misunderstand the historical inequities and injustices that lead to its creation.
Anyway, I dig the blog. I hope to hear more nuanced debate on this topic than what I've seen elsewhere.
Trust me, you don't want to antagonize people like Geraldine!
No, the suggestion would be as absurd and divorced from reality as the claim that Obama has had it easy because of the color of his skin.
We have two great candidates whose credentials rise above race and gender. Why can't our debate about these two candidates remain above race and gender as well?
Obama has been hammered about Rezko, even though he has not or ever been implicated in any wrongdoing. Therefore, he had to have a lengthy sit-down with the press who grilled him for an hour and a half on this relationship. Has Bill and/or Hillary given up ANY documents (taxes, donations, etc)? Yet, I don't see anybody in the MSM demanding these things.
Yeah...Obama's had it easy because he's black. That statement would be laughable if there weren't dreamers like you actually believing it.
"Will never vote for him and I don't know anyone still supporting him after this last bunch of garbage."
No one that I know takes any of this Wright garbage seriously. We are tired of letting FOX news define the terms of our debate. Why is it that Obama has to denounce every person he knows who has said something inflamatory while McCain can embrace someone who calls the Catholic Church "the great whore" and Clinton never condemns Geraldine's "lucky to be black" comments?
The real issues of course are being discussed by no one. Even Obama gets so distracted by all this nonsense that he can't focus on what matters. Have you noticed what is happening with the economy? Iraq? Do you really want more of the same? That is what Clinton is going to give us. She will dress it up and throw a few bones to the left (maybe a supreme court nominee who actually believes in choice and evolution -- maybe -- if we are good). I think people are finally starting to wake up, they better because our way of life and essentially our survival are at stake.
Well stated article.
Thank you,
I guess we should all be responsible for everything our friends say. In that case, I guess your friends are perfect. Let's compare something the reverend said 7 years ago to someone on Hillary's finance committee saying something in the context of the campaign, or maybe Bill's dumb statements, or maybe Bob Johnson's innuendo, or Penn's daily misquotes...
The list goes on and on. But hey, you do what you have to do. There's a reason why intelligent, educated folks overwhelmingly choose Obama over Hillary "Republican-lite" Clinton. Those type of distracting, non-issue issues only work on the brainless and easily distracted.