Why Ask Why?
You know I just love reading blogs, particularly my own. Not necessarily for the information that they impart, which are admittedly biased on the part of the author, but mostly for the comments from the readers. I especially like the right-wing leaning commentaries. While my politics are left leaning and I identify much more with liberal policies, I find the right-wingers to be somewhat more colorful and imaginative. For example, the buzz du jour for the righties is the recent endorsement by Colin Powell for Barack Obama. The conventional knee-jerk opinion on the extreme right is that this is a racially based endorsement, and the only reason Powell endorsed Obama is because he is African-American. In a much more general sense, they choose to believe that all blacks are voting for Obama based solely on race.
This brings up a couple of interesting questions for me as an African-American. Ignoring the fact that this accusation is racist in and of itself, the real question is what does it say about Whites who have endorsed John McCain. Is he winning these endorsements because of his race? Are all whites voting for McCain for this same reason? If this is the case, then it should stand to reason that McCain should be leading by a very wide margin in the polls. Given that he is not (the latest polls show him 10pts behind), I would say the above logic is rather flawed, wouldn’t you? There’s also the question of those Whites who choose to endorse and vote for Obama. What’s their reasoning? Certainly it can’t be because of race. Are these Whites more enlightened and intelligent than the Blacks who are voting for Obama? Do you see how utterly racist that sounds on the face of it? That Obama’s Black support is somehow less significant, less intelligent than the support he gets from Whites.
And let’s just say for the sake of argument that Blacks actually are supporting Obama based solely on his race. I defy you, then, to explain why neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton have ever obtained the Democratic nomination despite having run numerous times. If Blacks only support Black candidates because they’re Black, as has been implied, then one would think that they or the number of other African-Americans who have run would have gotten the nod at least once. Of course it could be because the more “enlightened” Whites decided that the White candidate at the time was better suited for the office. That being the case, I’ll bring this thing full circle and ask you to explain Barack Obama. Surely you do not suggest that the Black vote is so powerful as to be solely responsible for Obama’s lead in the polls. Do you?
I would not begin to deny that there are Blacks who are supporting Obama based on his race, just as there are Whites who are supporting McCain (or more precisely, are against Obama) based on racial motivations. But to imply that this is a majority, or even a significant minority, is just as patently racist as the action itself. And the knee-jerk reaction by the “no-information” faction of the right-wing underscores just how important Powell’s endorsement is in this campaign season. Perhaps the question that the far right should be asking itself is this. Would you be accusing Powell of being racist (which is exactly what you are doing) if he had supported McCain?
