(NAME-MCE) Race is not ‘overriding’ - It won’t disappear from politics soon

[Anselmo Villanueva]

http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/opinion/20485648-47/story.csp

EDITORIAL: Race is not ‘overriding’ - It won’t disappear from politics soon

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Register Guard    Eugene OR

Following the national news for the past week, you would think that race had
raised its ugly head again in U.S. politics. What a surprise.

With the nation’s first black president installed in the White House, did
anyone think that race would not be a topic of conversation? The only real
surprise is that, until now at least, the discussion has been muted.

That is partly because the central figure, President Obama, has played it
cool. Even last week, when he was asked on CNN whether some of the angry
criticism of his push for health care reform was motivated by racial
feeling, Obama replied: “Are there people out there who don’t like me
because of race? I’m sure there are. That’s not the overriding issue here.”

Less cool was former President Jimmy Carter, who earlier in the week alleged
that an “overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity”
toward Obama was “based on the fact that he is a black man.”

Obama offered no response when asked about Carter’s comments.

Race even inserted itself into the huge reaction to South Carolina
Congressman Joe Wilson’s “You lie” shout during Obama’s address to a joint
session of Congress.

Wilson had never hurled such a public insult at George W. Bush when he was
president. That may have been because he agreed with Bush about most issues.
And it may be that Wilson would have become equally agitated, with equally
embarrassing results, about Obama if Obama were as white as Bush. It’s
impossible to know.

By the end of the week a rough consensus had rolled into place behind two
conclusions:

1) A small but significant group of whites hold angry views on a number of
issues (such as their right to own and publicly display guns) and they are,
unfortunately, racist as well. They genuinely dislike having a black man in
the White House.

2) A much larger group of people with conservative but less angry political
views are basically free of racist taint. They would be equal-opportunity
critics of any president as liberal as Barack Obama. They didn’t like Bill
Clinton, after all, or Carter.

Members of Group 2 probably attended some of the August recess town meetings
and spoke (politely, most of the time) against Democratic health care plans.

Some of them undoubtedly also attend “tea parties” to try to restore the
country to its moorings.

But there is no real reason to worry about the members of Group 2. They’re
not a threat to civil order or to racial amity.

The question is whether Obama’s election and the events since then,
including the surprisingly acrimonious debate over health care, have caused
a major shift toward Group 1 and a depletion of Group 2.

Our sense is that no such shift has occurred.

If anything, race has become a momentary distraction from the discouraging
fact that health care reform is a highly contentious issue, no less so than
when the Clintons attempted their version of a plan 15 years ago.

Would the situation be much different if Hillary Clinton had been elected
last year? She’s had more experience with the general topic than Obama, and
more political experience generally. But it’s likely that opposition to her
reform campaign would have been just as strong and just as partisan.

The main difference would likely be that instead of talking about racism
today we would have been talking about sexism.

But what do you think: Would Joe Wilson have yelled at President Hillary
Clinton?