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The paradox of post-racialism

by
20 August 2008

Political campaigning in the US is hampered by charges of racism, says Harriet Baber

PRESTON Smith Brooks was a Democratic congressman from South Carolina. On 22 May 1856, on the floor of the United States Senate, Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner unconscious with his walking cane because he disagreed with a speech Sumner had made.

Brooks pounded Sumner until his stick broke, while a congressional colleague brandishing a pistol prevented other senators from intervening. After the news got out, Brooks’s constituents sent him dozens of new canes — one bearing the inscription, “Hit him again.”

Nowadays, American voters do not care for such rough politics. They punish politicians unmercifully for negative campaigning. So, when Senators Clinton and Obama were battling for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Clinton’s campaign aired a TV advertisement that caused Americans to cry foul. Images of sleeping children were juxtaposed with those of Senator Clinton, trouser-suited and fully made-up, answering the Red Telephone at 3 a.m..

Senator Obama was not mentioned by name, but the implication was that when it came to the crunch, Senator Clinton would do a better job than Senator Obama — who might be snoozing in his pyjamas at 3 a.m..

Orlando Patterson, a sociologist, saw a racist subtext to the advertisement: “When I saw the Clinton ad’s central image. . . I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan. . .The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother, or father. . . Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond.”

With such exquisite sensitivity in play, what is a candidate to do? Any suggestion that you might do a better job than your opponent can be spun as negative campaigning. If, however, you suggest that you would do no better than your opponent, or might even do worse, you are not campaigning at all.

The problem is logical rather than political. If you suggest that you would do a better job than your opponent, voters will punish you for negative campaigning; if you do not, voters will have no reason to choose you over your opponent. But your opponent is in the same logical bind: he does not dare suggest that he would do a better job. So voters can have no reason to choose either candidate. Skilled politicians without any scruples over logic may, of course, say that they would do the job better than their opponents but are just not saying that they would.

Post-racial politics poses similar logical problems. White Americans want to be assured that 21st-century America is authentically post-racial — that blacks are not only treated fairly, but believe that they are; that the sins of the past have been purged; and that adversarial identity-politics is over. But only blacks can provide those assurances, give absolution to white Americans, and usher in post-racialism.

What is a black politician to do, when race is the perennial elephant in the room? Senator Obama assiduously avoided talking about race at all, except to assure voters that he was reliably post-racial, but the media talked about race constantly, and Senator Obama’s supporters saw every setback as evidence of racism. At the same time as Senator Obama assured Americans that he had transcended race, and was untainted by the rough identity-politics of an older generation, his surrogates spun every criticism as a racist attack.

Senator Obama told Americans: “I’m black, but I’m not telling you that I am.” He played the trump race-card — the one that says “I am not a race card.”

Dr Harriet Baber is Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego, USA.

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