Stacked Deck
are the Clinton's playing the race card? the envelope, please.
2008-01-24
By Brian Gilmore
It was back in 2000 that Barack Obama, the Democratic hopeful for President, was exploited as not being “black enough.” Obama ran for the Congressional seat held by ex-Black Panther, Bobby Rush in 2000 and Rush, his credentials as black enough fully intact, trounced the upstart Obama. Obama’s strategy as the “Tiger Woods” of politics found no legs on the South Side of Chicago.
Fast forward just 8 years later, and the current strategy to defeat Barack Obama is not to challenge his authenticity as the “Tiger Woods” of politics, but to tell people he is black enough – like one drop too many, in the American sense. It is the current political game being expedited by Hillary Clinton and her campaign, and it is clever, and very ugly.
Obama, to his credit, is trying to fend it off but it is tough to dismiss race in America; it festers like an open wound because the country collectively punts every time the issue comes up. Hillary Clintons’ tactics are so good right now that gone are Obama’s uplifting speeches about “change.” Many have already stated and written that what the Clintons are doing is just politics so give us all a break. Fair enough, but that doesn’t mean political choices don’t have long-term consequences if the Clintons are, in fact, playing the race card quietly.
Of course, the Clinton choice to expose themselves to accusations of racism is especially risky considering that if Hillary Clinton’s share of the black vote next November (if she is the nominee) isn’t huge, she has no chance to win.
Others say that what the Clintons are doing is not only just politics; it simply isn’t race card playing. The implication is Obama’s supporters are playing the race card by implying that Clinton is playing the race card with weak supporting facts.
This exchange recalls an op-ed written in 1993 by the Black nationalist rapper, Paris. Paris chastised Bill Clinton, the incoming President, for trying to have it both ways on the issue of race when he went after Sista Souljah at a Rainbow Push event in Chicago in 1992. Clinton, who wanted to win badly, was accused of going after the angry white male vote with the famous decision to trash Sista Souljah openly. Many of Clinton’s supporters back then urged blacks to get over it and let's unite. For Paris, and many others, it was a calculating act full of blatant racial overtones:
"Here's our dilemma: If we speak up, we're special interest whiners, but if we keep quiet,
we lose self-respect and reinforce our own invisibility. I, for one, cannot remain silent.
Your actions were, in my view, calculating and unprincipled, and they angered me - but
not enough to make me believe that you could not redeem yourself."
Bill Clinton didn’t pay dearly for that sin; Paris and many others must have believed he redeemed himself. We voted him into office with a black man, Ron Brown, running the Democratic Party and leading the way.
I doubt if Hillary will be so lucky. Her campaign’s tactics are subtle like a wink but they are there and the strategy is obvious now.
Consider the words of Dick Morris, the former Clinton confidante. He offers an updated analysis of the Clinton race strategy:
"The Clintons are encouraging the national media to disregard the whites who vote in South Carolina’s Democratic primary and focus on the black turnout, which is expected to be quite large. They have transformed South Carolina into Washington, D.C. — an all-black primary that tells us how the African-American vote is going to go."
Are the Clintons really trying to win by isolating Barack Obama as African-American and hence, on the other side of the symbolic racial railroad track? The evidence is a little muddled but there is too much debris on the road to dismiss it.
It started with the drug reference from the Clinton campaign worker; next was Black Entertainment Television’s Bob Johnson. Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” statement was mixed in there, all of it rising to create division. Now, Mrs. Clinton all but abandoned South Carolina this week. Does she want black votes or is she winking to the rest of America saying, see I told you, Obama is just like the other black candidate – he’s black?
The result of all of this: Clinton is over here with America and Obama, well, look, he is over there with the blacks. How can you be the “Tiger Woods” of politics if you are over there with the blacks in mass?
It is an odd strategy but yet one that has taken African-Americans to the crossroads where the following question is pondered: If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, do we forgive and forget like in 1992 or do we send a message to the Clintons’ James Brown style ala the Big Payback.
This time it is probably the Big Payback.
Before Clinton ventures too much futher down this road, somone should remind her about Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and the price for fumbling the racial football in an election.
Townsend, a member of the Kennedy political family, angered blacks in Maryland when she ran for governor of Maryland in 2003. She was very popular and was Lieutenant Governor for 8 years prior to her run However, Townsend failed to offer an African-American the slot as her running mate despite the fact that African-Americans make up 30 percent of the black vote in Maryland. Highly qualified African-Americans didn’t even get serious consideration right before Townsend tacked to the right and chose a much more conservative white running mate. Prince George’s County, Maryland, one of the most powerful African-American voting blocs in the nation, was outraged, and Townsend’s high office ambitions died.
Townsend turned her back on African-Americans, but, under the Bush administration, the country is turning its back on everyone. Things can get worse but no one actually expects Hillary Clinton to do much more than her husband did. Besides, his presidency is incredibly overrated.
More black men went to jail under Bill Clinton than under Ronald Reagan and he did not openly and aggressively try to end the “drug war” policy that did it. In fact, in 1994, he signed into law a bill that made sure they did go to jail. The result of these policies: thousands of black men will not vote in November 2008 because of Clinton’s policies relating to the “war on drugs.”
On affirmative action, he urged the country to “mend it” but don’t “end it.” Of course, it would have been more honest and honorable to say: affirmative action is an overrated and limited remedial race policy designed to try to rectify a small part of the country’s legacy of slavery and segregation.
But what is most troubling about the Clinton tactics is they are trying to win an election with the same scorched earth policy they have made famous for decades. If Obama’s blackness must be highlighted so whites on the fence will flock to us, so be it, give us those dirty votes too.
In 1990 Harvey Gannt, former Mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, was about to beat Jesse Helms for his Senate seat in 1990. Gantt, like Obama, was a nice guy, a rising star, and a guy who downplayed race.
Helms had played nice for most of the campaign but most knew he wouldn’t sit pat the whole time. As the election approached, he pulled out the big guns – he ran a famous anti-affirmative action ad called “Hands” against Gantt that made the good people of North Carolina remember that Gantt was, in fact, black. Helms surged to a victory that was doubtful just weeks before the election.
But Jesse Helms never really needed the black vote to win in North Carolina. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, cannot afford to lose much of the black vote and win.
Perhaps Mrs. Clinton should call Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
Brian Gilmore is an attorney and a writer based in Washington, D.C.
