This year’s presidential election was going to be extraordinary, no matter which way you sliced it. For the first time in 54 years, there will not be an incumbent president or vice president on the ticket. For the first time in 22 years, there will not be a Clinton or a Bush on the ticket (unless, in the very unlikely event, John McCain might choose one for a running mate). Most amazing, this is the first time ever in the history of the United States that the two major presidential candidates are also sitting members of the U.S. Senate.
Yet, there is another equally notable milestone. On Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention and on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Senator Barack Obama will be the first African-American to receive the nomination of a major political party for president.
Our larger American context makes this a phenomenal moment in our nation’s history. It was not until the early 1960s that many blacks truly felt they had the right to vote. While the 15th Amendment of 1870 granted voting rights to all U.S. citizens regardless of “race, color or previous condition of servitude,” it would not be until the repeal of Jim Crow laws and the civil rights movement that a truly effective African-American electorate would be developed.
This distinctive history calls into question some of the criticism leveled at Sen. Obama. With such racial tensions and transitions in our collective and recent past, it was hard not hear the charge of being an “elitist” as a more cryptic smear of being “uppity.” In the same way, the suggestion of being naive carries the implication of another racial stereotype: being “a good boy,” “simple-minded” and not a “troublemaker.”
Now, with the talking points shifting to being ill-prepared and not “ready to lead,” it’s easy to hear echoes of Rush Limbaugh’s 2003 infamous criticism of Philadelphia Eagles’ Donovan McNabb of being “overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed.” While Limbaugh insisted his comments were not about race, I’ve been around enough football fields, sports bars and water coolers to know the truth being proclaimed behind the words being said: The position of quarterback (leadership) is best left to the white kid.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to suggest an unqualified endorsement of anyone for president. I’m sure this same ad hominem approach could easily be leveled at Sen. John McCain based upon his age, his “anger management” reputation or his own admitted mistakes of marital failure.
It’s just not simple. We may join that great chorus of judging a man “by the content of his character and not the color of his skin,” but at least we should admit how racism is never merely skin deep. We make assumptions about character because of skin color or age or yes, even gender (another interesting historic trajectory this election could have traveled), sometimes without even consciously knowing we have done so.
Maybe it would be better if this election was not about character – at least not to the level it has been portrayed and promoted at every twist and turn. Perhaps we should make this election turn on policies and positions, what is said and what is promised and better yet, what has actually been done in the patterns of the past.
But that requires work, some research and some reading. It also requires us to get serious about another chorus, this one as true as a Sunday school testimony: “Red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in his sight.” We sang it as a dream. Now, let’s be serious about its truth.
