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.

This Just In: Black Lives Not Worth Anything

The verdict to the Sean Bell shooting trial came in about 30 minutes ago. The officers involved were completely acquitted on all counts, and I feel sick to my stomach. Granted, I always expected this verdict, but there was some small part of me that thought these officers would've been found guilty for something, ANYTHING, that had to do with the tragic shooting of this young black man in New York City. These police officers in UNMARKED CARS shot an UNARMED man to death on the eve of his wedding, and they are not guilty of even the most minuscule counts that are being leveraged against them? I am all for personal responsibility in the black community, but those talking points just don't apply here. This man and his friends were assumed to be armed and dangerous because they were partying while black in a certain area late at night, and the officers acted on their assumptions, which were in no way proven to be true. Now, as in the past, police officers will walk the streets freely after killing yet another young black man. Will I ever find myself in this sort of situation?

There is a part of me that has to believe that my life, at least in the eyes of the law, is worth just as much as anyone else's in this society, but situations like this make me seriously doubt that. Being a young black man in this society means that my intelligence is doubted, that my life is worth less than others, and that one wrong move could send me into a jail cell or a casket at a rate that is vastly greater than that of my White, Latino, and Asian peers. The Sean Bell case isn't about Racist White Cops, because at least one of the officers involved is a Black man. Instead, it is about a culture that sees every black man as a potential threat and a thug, and how this culture feeds into the one dominant societal institution that is supposed to protect us all. I have always believed that police officers are our friends, that they exist to protect us from the bad apples in society. I believe in America, and I believe in equal justice for all. Incidents like this verdict serve only to slowly chip away at that belief, and at the love that I have for a country I have once worn the uniform of.

Is my life worth anything today, tomorrow, or the day after? The answer from the New York State Judicial System is a resounding NO, with the underlying fury of an angry stepfather that dares me to even think about asking the question again.