Ferraro, Part II

March 12th, 2008 Posted in Of Interest

One more word about Geraldine Ferraro: her bluntness and tenacity are admirable. And that Obama’s campaign benefits from a guilty white constituency because he is African American is probably right (as I have argued before). And certainly she is not racist, and really she’s not a representative of the Clinton campaign.

Yet Ferraro is just wrong.

First, while it is true that Obama’s campaign is made viable by white guilt, insofar as it balances white racism, it certainly isn’t helped overall or occasioned by it. And there is no parallel here to her being picked as a vice-presidential nominee, as she claims: no one has picked Obama. There is no affirmative action here.

Second, her comment seems to be a variation on the idea that Obama has been given a free ride by the press and that Clinton is a victim of reverse discrimination–another myth we can reject.

Finally, and this is really the error: the Obama campaign did not call Ferraro a racist, as she has claimed. She was accused of introducing race into the campaign in a way that heightens racial tensions. Whether intentional or not (and I think it was unintentional), she has put the finishing touches on a Clinton strategic trope, which is to race-bait by a) bringing up race and then b) falsely accuse Obama of introducing charges of racism. The introduction of the idea of reverse discrimination is in this case an unforgivable theme only comprehensible to an older generation that is out of touch–not with some politically correct stricture, but with the fundamental reality of the Obama campaign’s meticulous avoidance of the subject of race. If there is racism here it is racism by grandfather clause, the paranoid expectation that the racial sensitivities of yesteryear must be at the bottom of any political objection by a black candidate.