Can Obama Eradicate Race As a Topic in National Elections?

 

I APOLOGIZE UP FRONT FOR HAVING THE GALL to second-guess the famed and erudite polemicist Christopher Hitchens who asked this week in Slate if "isn't there something pathetic and embarrassing" about the nation's obsession with Senator Barack Obama's race. Hitchens then goes on to lampoon white America's guilt-ridden swoon over Obama, Republican Alan Keyes for his past "are you black enough?" challenge to the Illinois Senator, and even Obama's Chicago church for its pander to members who remain "true to our native land, the mother continent, the cradle of civilization." And if he's fuzzy on the nuances of what makes a man of mixed-race "black," I highly recommend reading biracial author David Matthews's essay in Radar on this year's election. All this to say: Pardon my insolence, but does it not seem as though Mr. Hitchens has answered his own question?

The fact that Hitchen's column was published January 7, the day before Obama's loss in the New Hampshire primary, may well be significant. For it's only the day after the nation's first primary that Obama's race actually became a part of the public dialogue, and small wonder. Despite polls show Obama leading with double digits, Hillary won Tuesday, Obama lost, and the nation's pollsters imploded. Up until then, few in the media had actually openly posed the question of whether America would vote for a black man (or woman, for that matter) as President of the United States, perhaps fearing that the question itself was archaic, that the nation had advanced so much in just 50 years that the point was moot.

May I suggest there was also fear, for the issue of race in America is one of -- if not the -- most complex and intractable problems that the country faces, and one that the media perpetually avoids. The post-game quarterbacking over what went wrong with the polls started immediately, and among the issues raised was whether white America suppresses the truth about how race plays into its voting. Historically, this has been known as "the Bradley effect", the phenomenon in which black candidates have polled to win but ultimately lose the election, ostensibly because white voters have hidden their true biases from questioners. But already comes denial in the media that race could have been a factor in Obama's loss. No matter that the contest occurred just days after Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman suggested that opponents of golf great Tiger Woods "might have to lynch him in a back alley." Or that it was a brief few months ago that TV and radio provocateur Don Imus was kicked off the air for referring to the Rutgers University's basketball team as "nappy-head hos." Or that the U.S. Supreme Court last summer ruled that "race cannot be a factor in the assignment of children to public schools", vexing both black and white public school parents, and confounding the issue of racial preference in competitive schools. Or that performer and comedian Bill Cosby and Harvard Professor Alvin F. Poussaint have ignited controversy in black communities for daring to suggest that African Americans must eschew a victim mindset. Pardon the pun, but I'm only going skin deep on the rehashing of racial controversies.

It's about time that the issue of race is dealt with honestly in this presidential race, and in America at-large. Hitchen's mock impatience with the idea that race still matters on both sides of the color line belies our nation's reality. The media should not do us the disservice of pretending it isn't.