Ethnicity exploited in race to White House

In this election year, like all that came before it, candidates
will jockey for position by claiming superiority in their mastery
of the issues that matter most to the electorate. Having no such
mastery, however, the candidates will simply resort to spouting
rhetoric about a red herring. This year, that red herring is
race.

In the last two elections, the rhetoric was pretty innocuous
tripe. We felt each other’s pain, built bridges to the 21st
century, needed change, lit a thousand points of light, and looked
for a stronger America.

Whatever.

There was at least one positive thing about the past empty
rhetoric: there was no mistaking it for what it was. When Bob Dole
prattled on about whatever it was Bob Dole prattled on about, it
was obvious he was venting monotone hot air. This rhetoric was
substituted for speech and debate on actual issues, but it could
not masquerade as actual issues that demanded attention.

Now, that has all changed. In addition to George W. Bush’s
insistence that he is for children (has any candidate ever been
against children?), he has made it a point to proclaim the
“new” Republican Party as “the party of
inclusion.”

The Republican Party has until recently been rather exclusionary
when it comes to minorities. This is a weakness they are doing
their best to hide. It is the reason they always tout themselves as
“the party of Abraham Lincoln” and not “the party
of David Duke”. Still, the fact remains that an overwhelming
majority of minority voters side with the liberal Democrats.
Perhaps if the Republicans hadn’t spent so much time giving
tax cuts to the rich (most of whom seem to be white) they
wouldn’t have this public relations dilemma.

Not to be outdone with brandishing the racial red herring, the
Democrats caught a fish this big. They have nominated as their vice
president, Orthodox Jew Joseph Lieberman. The Republicans, for all
their gum flapping about racial inclusion, still managed to put
another rich white guy on their ticket. “In your face,
GOP!” say the Democrats.

But this move by the Democrats only spawned more useless
distracting debate. For a week the Washington Post ran nothing but
stories on the order of, “How an Orthodox Jew copes with the
demands of congressional life,” “What blacks think
about Lieberman,” “What Latinos think about
Lieberman,” to “What Belgian Walloons think about
Lieberman.” They might as well have run a spread called,
“Jews’ News: Leapin’ Lizards, Them Folk is
Everywhere!”

It became such an important controversy that the head of the
Texas NAACP felt compelled to go on public radio and put his
anti-Semitic foot in his mouth (after which he resigned due to
pressure from his superiors). He claimed a Jew should not be in as
important and sensitive a position as the vice presidency because
all us untrustworthy Jews care about is money. Odd words
considering Lieberman put himself in danger to help register black
voters in the South during the ’60s. Perhaps the greatest
tragedy of the racial red herring is that by making it the primary
(non)issue, the candidates open the dark doors to the kinds of
debates genocides are based on.

Not only have the mainstream candidates tried to distract by
politically masturbating about race, but the unelectable third
party candidates have done it as well. Pat Buchanan, the Reform
Party’s official-candidate-for-now and registered lunatic,
has nominated a black woman as his running mate.

Is race an important issue in America? Of course, but Bush and
Gore have failed to treat it as such. Neither offers solutions to
the racial problems in this country, particularly the economic
disparity between whites and non-whites. Instead, they have gone on
a quest for the perfect poster boy for equality in America. Are
they really trying to include other races? Yes, but only for their
votes.

Other than saving Social Security, I haven’t heard Bush
and Gore address many other key issues. Who has time to talk about
capital punishment, the environment, health care, prisons
overcrowded with recreational pot smokers, child abuse, police
corruption, the economy, educating our dullard illiterate children,
military policy, campaign finance reform, censorship, school
shooting sprees, funding for the arts, abortion, potential Supreme
Court nominees, AIDS and workers’ rights when there’s a
Jew on the ticket?

The fact that we have thrown so much emphasis on race is
symptomatic of a racial problem, but not the one that we usually
think of. We will know that racism is no longer an issue when the
mention of someone’s race fails to raise an eyebrow. People
had plenty to say about President Kennedy’s Catholicism, the
same way Lieberman is the focus of controversy now. How nice it
will be when nobody cares anymore.

In the 2000 election, races have been treated the same as
special interest groups: as voting blocs to be secured. Votes are
traded for potential policy. The only difference between a race and
a regular special interest group is a lack of funding and unity. If
a candidate appears empathetic enough, the minorities go his/her
way.

The choice of the word “race” itself carries major
implications. The word “race” implies a winner, much
like the campaign itself. We have our leading candidates, the white
party, the black party, the Asian party, and everyone else in the
Please Don’t Kill Us party. Of course, in reality no such
parties actually exist. But by inserting race into a political
campaign, we validate the most primal and paranoid fears we hold
about a racial competition.

Up until Gore’s acceptance speech, few issues were dragged
into the light. It was the first time he had really laid his ideas
out, and almost none of the speech was devoted to race rhetoric.
Granted, there was the standard garbage about the future being
tomorrow and building bridges to somewhere, but at long last a
candidate had the courage to avoid the easy target of race.

How nice it will be to live in a world where the mention of a
candidate (or person) who is black, female, Jewish, Indian, Latino,
or any other race is overwhelmingly met with the response,
“So what?”

When polls of our suspicion are no longer relevant, bigoted
assassins are no longer feared, and ancestry no longer dictates
policy, then we shall at last have ceased to think like a melting
pot and truly become one. I long for the day when we are blissfully
ignorant of our differences, and courageously curious about our
strengths. God, let us find our way to a time when trite paragraphs
such as this are purged from the public eye as the unnecessary
fluff they are. Happy campaigning!