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Will Race Be the Defining Issue of the 2008 Election?
The nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President is without doubt a watershed event in American history. But its meaning varies according to one’s viewpoint, life experience and – most especially – where you happen to think America has been and where it is going in terms of its long struggle with race.
This is a pertinent issue for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Our mission seeks to find relevance and application in the modern-day world of the lessons to be learned in the struggle for freedom and the abolition of slavery in pre-Civil War America. Of the many narratives linking that history to the present, one of the most important (and in some ways most controversial) is the lasting impact of slavery in contemporary society. And an essential and so far unanswered component of that discussion is the question of whether we are, as a nation, ever going to be willing to have a serious national conversation on race.
There has always been an undercurrent of race issues in America, as reflected in the legislative and political battles of the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, debates over the merits of affirmative action, or issues related to crime and poverty in America’s urban core. Yet as historian Eric Foner (who will be speaking at the Freedom Center on October 16) points out, a serious national dialogue on race has been too long delayed by a widespread misunderstanding of our historical experience with slavery. “Nowhere is the gap between scholarly inquiry and public perceptions of history (been) more stark,” Foner wrote in 2001 in his “Who Owns History.” To many Americans, the Civil War settled the issue of slavery once and for all, at a bloody cost of 630,000 lives. Yet in actuality, the guarantees of citizenship, individual rights and personal freedom for freed slaves and their descendants, incorporated in three Constitutional amendments at the end of the war, were instead stymied and delayed for a century by the ugly chains of Jim Crow segregation.
The grindingly slow pace of progress to full equality has always been, to many African Americans, a bitter pill, a perverse parallel universe in which the nation’s boast of freedom for all was denied to millions of its citizens both in the law and in racial antipathy. Today, discussions of race and race relations most often surface in the news media, the blogosphere and in classrooms around the time of the Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday in mid-January and Black History Month in February, as if matters were too sensitive or unpleasant to dwell upon for the rest of the year. It’s a well-established practice, for example, that many companies compress their employee diversity consciousness-raising activities during Black History Month. It’s also the time when TV advertising goes out of its way to prominently feature African American actors.
As a result, the black perspective on race and justice is nearly invisible except for a few weeks in late winter when, in a concentrated rush of activity, people take note of the fact of our national struggle with racism and redemption. For the remainder of the year, race-related issues seem to reside just below the level of public consciousness — off the proverbial “radar screen” — unless something happens, like anonymous placements of nooses in suburban office buildings or college campuses, that create momentary headlines.
Of course, this is a white perspective, one that has been maintained over time and reinforced virtually every day in the national as well as local news media. Yet among African Americans, race is always a matter of deep concern, never more so during times of economic stress, when disparities of income, education and opportunity serve to sharpen both the real and perceived gulf separating blacks and whites in contemporary society.
Senator Obama’s candidacy seems certain to change all that, or at a minimum bring the issue of race squarely on to the radar screen. The risk is that while honest dialogue about race could help bind up lingering wounds, it could also exacerbate deeply embedded insecurities. The additional danger is that race could come to predominate election coverage, delaying serious discussions of what to do about the economy, Iraq and the environment — issues of surpassing importance to all Americans. As his acceptance speech Thursday night indicates, Obama himself is eager to present his case for the Presidency not in terms of race alone, but of shared responsibility and common purpose of all citizens.
As his nomination became official, both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal – two of the three most influential national newspapers (along with the Washington Post) – carried articles in which issues related to race relations, from an historical and contemporary perspective, form a backdrop to the Obama candidacy. The Associated Press tackled the issue of race directly, summarizing what is likely to be an often repeated question by the media: is America willing to elect an African American President? More such stories are bound to appear.
What direction the new national dialogue on race takes remains to be seen. From now until November, it will be present throughout the Presidential campaign, whether explicitly taken up by the candidates in public debate or as an influence in the strategies and tactical decisions of the competing Obama and McCain campaigns. One thing is certain: if the discussion of race moves from the front page of the newspaper and begins to engage families at the kitchen table of households across the country, then undoubtedly the Obama candidacy will have already exerted a positive, badly overdue influence on how Americans of different races and ethnicities see and understand one another.
If you’d like to participate in this dialogue, post a comment on the Freedom Blog.
Tags: 2008 Presidential Campaign, Barrack Obama, Eric Foner, Harriett Tubman, Hillary Clinton, Race, Underground Railroad
