by Gwen Richardson
Will the American media ever let a black presidential candidate wage a campaign as an American citizen, without turning it into a racial cauldron?
That is the question that faces our nation as the national media have turned Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy to a referendum on race. They have not allowed him to wage a campaign on the issues or his qualifications. Instead, they have pushed racial division – or been manipulated into doing so by the Clinton campaign and its surrogates – until the American electorate has no choice but to separate along racial lines.
Media rarely admit responsibility for their misdeeds, preferring to rationalize their actions by claiming that they are just reporting the facts. But their focus on the facts is highly selective and they reserve their focus on racial matters for instances where a black candidate – in this case, Obama – is involved. Racial division seems to be media’s objective.
The racial focus started right after the New Hampshire primary was over. Pre-election polls indicated that Obama had been ahead by an average of 9 points before the votes were cast, but Hillary Clinton eked out a 2-point victory and surprised everyone, including her own campaign. There was much hand-wringing regarding the results and the conclusion reached by many, both black and white, was that white voters in New Hampshire lied to pollsters regarding their support for Obama.
Even though New Hampshire is a virtually all-white state and race was not a noticeable factor during the campaign, this was the conclusion many reached. A more likely explanation of Obama’s failure to win in New Hampshire was that, with all of the pundits declaring him the winner before the votes were cast, two things happened: 1) His supporters thought he was a shoe-in and didn’t vote for him with the intensity they would have in a competitive race, and 2) Independent voters opted to vote for John McCain, believing that the Arizona senator needed their votes more than Obama.
Since the campaign left New Hampshire, media have focused on little else other than the racial aspects of the election. These racial references are sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant.
In a New York Times article on Jan. 21, reporter Jeff Zeleny wrote: “For nearly a year, as the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination wound through Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Obama has strived to run a race-neutral campaign.” (Emphasis added)
The problem with Zeleny’s statement is that the implicit definition of “race-neutral” is “all white, with no blacks included.” Therein lies the rub. If blacks are included in any significant numbers, then the focus becomes racial. In other words, their very existence is a problem for some who simply cannot see beyond their color to their humanity.
Here is another example of the racial reporting that occurred prior to the Jan. 27th South Carolina primary, distributed by Bloomberg media and written by Julianna Goldman and Lorraine Woellert:
“Michelle Obama appeared at a lunch with 100 mostly white women at an upscale Greenville restaurant, then stopped to talk with a largely black audience at a black beauty parlor in Newton, and ended her day with a speech to a crowd of about 200 African American students at the University of South Carolina.”
When candidate Obama’s wife went on the campaign trail, the most important piece of information, according to these two reporters, was the racial background of everyone in the room. No such racial details were provided for audiences addressed by Hillary, Bill or Chelsea Clinton, nor for John Edwards. Obviously, these racially obsessed reporters are unable to see Obama, his wife Michelle, or his supporters in anything other than through a racial prism.
Moreover, when a black candidate is involved, media incessantly slice and dice the American electorate along racial lines. Have we ever been told how many Italian-Americans support former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani? What percentage of the black and Hispanic vote is each of the Republican candidates receiving in the primaries? How many Mormons in each state support former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney? How many Jewish voters supported Sen. Joseph Lieberman in the 2000 presidential election?
We don’t know the answers to these questions because media never ask. They allow these candidates to run as American citizens and not be defined by their race or religion. Yet, we are repeatedly reminded that Obama has strong black support (as if there is something wrong with that), and diminishing white and Hispanic support.
The context of these statements is that somehow Obama is doing something to cause this decline in broad appeal when, in fact, media spend so much time fanning the flames of racial division that many white voters are simply turned off. Interestingly, the fact that 76 percent of white South Carolina Democrats preferred not to vote for Obama is not considered to be a sign of negative voter behavior to media reps, but his 78 percent black support is somehow out of bounds. The onus is on Obama to explain why blacks support him, but no explanation is required from Hillary Clinton regarding her support from white women.
Finally, there is the constant devaluing of the black vote by the media. If Obama, for example, receives the lionshare of black votes, that is somehow less valuable than getting the majority of white votes. In other words, we’re basically back to the formula put forth in the original U.S. Constitution where blacks were considered to be three-fifths of a person. In the view of media and some political analysts, it’s bad for a candidate to receive too many black votes, since a vote from a black citizen is perceived to be worth only a fraction of a vote from a white citizen.
Here is a glaring example: In New York Magazine, political commentator Dick Morris had this to say about the South Carolina primary four days before voters went to the polls: “If Obama wins, he loses. All the support from South Carolina’s African-Americans will render him the ‘black candidate’ he has worked to avoid becoming, and that ‘will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton.’”
Morris may need to rethink his assessment in light of Obama’s resounding victory on Saturday. But his point of view is clearly that too many black votes is a net loss for any candidate, but particularly a black one.
America has made progress in race relations and, to be sure, has much more to make. A good start would be for the media to stop constantly reminding us of a black citizen’s race whenever he or she is mentioned in the press. Because of the 1st Amendment, media will have to police itself in this regard. They claim to be liberal, but obviously not liberal enough to treat African Americans as full citizens.
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Gwen Richardson is an entrepreneur and author based in Houston, Texas. She is currently writing a book about the 2008 presidential election.
