Posted by
JDComments on Saturday, January 20, 2007 11:41:53 AM
As the Barack Obama campaign moves into high gear, its unique racial component will always be a factor to some degree, and seeing how the media deals with it will be interesting . The columnist Clarence Page has already weighed in, and I think it is instructive to look at what he has said.
Page posits that Obama’s candidacy is a test for both him and all of us, which implies that there is a right answer and a wrong answer to the exam, and we will be graded accordingly.
What this means for Obama is that he will be required to run a professional, competitive race which requires even the possibility that he may have to give up smoking [who says politicians don’t make sacrifices?]. As tests go, this one is fairly self explanatory.
The nature of our exam is a little more ambiguous it seems to me. For Page, this race will help serve to rectify many of the lingering problems of the racial divide, and again, this is pretty obvious. The question I have is, how does he envision this healing occurring?
If the test is whether we as a country can take Obama seriously as a candidate, and judge him by the same criteria as we use for all our politicians, then it is well worth taking, and if we fail we should be ashamed of ourselves.
Of course, by almost all accepted standards Obama is unqualified at this stage, and combined with the recent revelations about his Muslim upbringing he may already be dead in the water. But that is the nature of the job he is seeking.
However, based on some of Page’s comments, I do not think this is the test he has in mind.
Rather, he subtly, and not so subtly, makes the case that Obama’s color should be a significant, if not the overwhelming , consideration in assessing him. For instance:
His sheer winnability as a black candidate or, if you prefer, not-all-white candidate, offers a comforting reassurance to many that this country is not as racist as many Americans fear it still might be.
And:
And, unlike Edwards, he offers a bonus: He assuages white guilt.
These are the justifications for an affirmative action campaign, where rather than evaluating him on his merits, we are expected to overlook his drawbacks because he is black. And if this is the test, we will fail it if we do not elect him to office based on the color of his skin.
Affirmative action is a dreadful concept which institutionalizes racism by refusing to look past it. It is destructive to all involved, from the whites who miss opportunities to the blacks who are forever stigmatized . To attempt to extend it to the presidency of the US is more than just wrong, it threatens the very tenets this country was founded on, and offers the possibility that the most powerful position in the world will become a hostage to the white guilt Page references.
As Barack Obama goes forward, every attempt must be made to judge him fairly based on his skills and talents and capabilities , and while his race will always be a factor, any emphasis on it for either good or bad must be resisted and hopefully ignored , for using skin color as a positive consideration is just as wrong as using it for a negative one.