Nathaniel

Shockey

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March 17, 2008

Barack Obama and Race: Get Ready for a Grimy Shower Mess

It was the liberals who spearheaded the civil rights movement. It was the progressives who preached freedom and equality, who challenged tradition, who demanded change and fair treatment. They were the ones who changed the flawed way Americans used to believe. And thanks to them, and the little bit of good within every one of us, racism in the traditional sense – laws denying blacks equal rights as whites – is dead.

And yet people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright Jr. (Barack Obama’s pastor) still seem to be thriving on their incessant and irresponsible patterns of screaming bloody racism at every turn. Isn’t it ironic that the group with the same fundamentals as the one that helped Americans see character more than color is the same one that just won’t let the racism issue die? And look how much it’s helping Obama.

People who bet on sports have to think of everything. They have to know who performs well in what weather conditions, against what type of offense, in what season of the year. And there is more than a handful whose wagers occasionally come down to who wears lucky underwear. They try their best to know and understand every conceivably relevant statistic.

I bring this up because, only a week ago, I wrote that I thought Obama’s race would ultimately prove helpful to him in this election. After all, over 90 percent of black people (and that is a very conservative estimate) have pledged their support for Obama. But there was an intangible factor, or statistic, if you want to call it, that I forgot. And no, it has nothing to do with Obama’s underwear.

Where race is an issue, a mess is sure to follow, and people hate messes. We prefer heroes and villains, bad wars and good wars, right and wrong, black and white. Life is easier that way. But most unfortunately for Obama, he is inevitably surrounded by those who refuse to let his race not be an issue. So we all get to witness fiascos such as the recent Jeremiah Wright Jr. controversy, which was a response to Hillary Clinton’s suggestion that Obama won certain states because of his skin color, which was started because, well, Obama has skin that is a shade darker than Hillary’s.

This sort of mess will seriously damage Obama’s image, which many claim is the best thing he has going for him. Considered by many to be the media’s love child, his image really is everything. But it’s been muddied, thanks to the antics of his opponent and – who could have seen this one coming? – his pastor.

There are different kinds of messy. There can be a messy room, which is quickly tidied. And then there is the grime in the shower type of mess, the dirty carpet which you never knew was dirty until you moved your couch.

I think the current Obama situation is the second kind of mess. This is because a person’s faith matters when running for office, especially the Oval Office. For example, I liked a lot of things about Mitt Romney, but his Mormonism bothered me. Feel free to read a little about the history of the religion. Then ask yourself if you want your country’s future in the hands of someone who believes in the divinity of a doctrine allegedly written on mysterious golden plates, even though there is absolutely no evidence for this at all. Read on, there is some seriously wacky stuff.

Would we feel comfortable electing a Muslim? What about someone whose pastor reeks of racism?

In Obama’s defense, he claimed to disagree with many of the Reverend’s ideas. But if the two are as close as they seem, if Wright really was Obama’s “spiritual mentor,” should we really feel perfectly at ease since Obama recently claimed to disagree with a few of his ideas? I don’t.

This sort of thing matters, as much as we want to write it off and say that a person’s beliefs should not be mixed up in politics. People are not so fortunate as to be split in two, one half of them the pragmatic leader, the other half being spiritual. We’re much more complicated than that.

And now, so are the Democratic primaries.

In sports like hockey and basketball, there are a few teams in the playoffs who duke it out for a full seven games, while the team one of them will eventually meet wins their series in four games. Once the next round arrives, one team is fresh while the other is quickly losing steam.

Democrats can only hope whoever comes out of this thing alive still has an image worth defending. And at this point, if I were a betting man, I’d take Hillary in seven.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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