The Race Card

What they're going to try to do is make you scared of me...you know, 'He doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills'. - Barack Obama

Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. - John McCain campaign

You know, I’ve always hated the phrase “the race card”. I’ve always thought that the fact that a person would even let this phrase cross their lips tells me all I need to know about their views and opinions on race. Once I participated in a wrap-up session for an internship program I did in the ad industry, and an offhand mention of the dreaded “race card” was directed at me when I dared to mention feeling a little discomfort at being the only black male intern at my agency. In our society, which remains too undereducated and afraid to engage in frank talk about race, the “race card” phrase functions as a way to suppress any conversation or real examination of how race affects our world and to take a shortcut through the pearly gates into that “post-racial” society that is easier for those with smaller minds to pretend we’re in. In my case, it was used to deny my feelings because they made others in the room uncomfortable.

To use the phrase assumes that “the race card” is a trump card that black and brown people just have at our disposal to use at our will, as if our race does not exist until we mention it, and as if this card hasn’t (in the words of Whoopi Goldberg) “been pinned to us” in every situation that we find ourselves in. Now, we find ourselves at the place in the campaign where we all feared we’d end up eventually, the place in which Barack Obama begins to acknowledge the root of some of the more unfair (“I just don’t know who he is!”) accusations against him and the place in which the republicans do their best “Who, me?” posturing and attempt to turn themselves (and by extension their base of working-class white voters) into the victims of yet another black man playing the “race card”.

Old man McCain has been on a negative streak lately (a recent CNN poll found that 1/3 of McCain’s ads refer to Obama negatively while 90% of Obama’s ads don’t even mention McCain), and while some of us are tired of the same old game, this stuff is apparently doing a good job of shoring up McCain’s base against Obama (and certainly not for McCain, because I haven’t heard anything about his own plans out of the man’s mouth in weeks). I’m inclined to agree that the only chance McGhoul has is to whip up his supporters, the republican base (suckers or millionaires or both), and perhaps a few skittish independents to become vehemently, virulently opposed to the other guy, that elitist liberal with the ungrateful, angry wife. You know, the one who plays the race card.

The Color of Patriotism

Right now, the big story in the media is Barack Obama‘s trip overseas to Iraq and Afghanistan. You know, he’s brushing up on the foreign policy credentials, looking presidential, and basically doing everything that the next president of the United States should do. On the dying political party and half-dead political candidate front, John McCain is presumably somewhere figuring out where Iraq and Pakistan are on a map before he makes yet another huge gaffe that his pals in the media will ignore. Anyways, while doing a little internet surfing, I came across some pictures of Obama in Afghanistan, and while the pictures were with service members that were predominantly of color, I must admit that I was shocked by some of the online reaction to this. I’m a bit of a political junkie, and since the majority of my friends are inline with my own views, I lurk on different political websites to see what people are really thinking. For better or for worse, nothing brings out the truth quite like the anonymity of the internet, but even with that said I was actually pretty fucking disgusted at just how shocked people seemed to be that, you know, there are actually black and Latino service members in the United States military.

In all honesty, the U.S. military is one of the most diverse places I’ve ever worked. While it isn’t without its racial and class issues, it is a place where it is not entirely uncommon for whites to be below blacks and Latinos in rank. Place that little nugget in contrast with the civilian population in which people can go their entire careers without ever having a boss of color, and you’ll see how progressive the military actually is in this respect. This whole situation also got me thinking about how patriotism is framed in this country and exactly who has ownership of patriotic principles. You see, when the right-wing attacks Michelle Obama for her perceived “ungratefulness” and questions Senator Obama’s love for his country, they are continuing a time-honored tradition of portraying blacks as somehow less than patriotic, one that was further ingrained in American culture with the “Welfare Queen“ hysteria brought about by Reagan in the ‘80s.

The image of the American soldier that you see when you close your eyes is probably that of a fresh-faced white male, his piercing blue eyes positively shimmering with love for his country and noble restraint. I mean, isn’t that what we’re shown by Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and the rest of the assorted Army propaganda that we’re subjected to? Of course, that is a perfectly valid image, but is it more valid than the immigrant who actually serves his country to gain citizenship, or the black girl who joins the military to help pay for college because her parents can‘t afford it? Or what about me? I’m the black gay guy, the double-minority who should feel more put-upon by this big, bad country than anyone else, right? Well, not so much. I love my country because I believe that it is a place where anything can happen for anybody, and I have been known to engage in heated discussions in defense of it. People like myself, those soldiers, and, yes, Senator Obama, scare the shit out of smaller-minded people in this country because we are examples of people of color taking ownership of this country in a way that we have almost never been allowed to before. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe that more people haven’t seen those pictures for a good reason, and that is because they defy the narrative about patriotism that has been subtly embedded into our society and forms the image of that soldier that you see in your head. Obama’s presence means that the color of patriotism is becoming a little more broad, and I think that what an Obama presidency will be able to inspire in terms of patriotism among those who have never been thought to be patriotic will be great for the country. For our country.