Barack Obama's speech on race is leading the news shows today. Since presidential campaigns strive to make us feel good about the candidate and our country, straight talk on this subject is forbidden. Obama, however, has walked up to the edge of the water and extended his toe. As Michael Tomasky points out, Obama, when he came today to speak of the Constitution, did not mention the "genius" of that document, but instead called it "unfinished," adding further that it allowed for the continuation of the slave trade for another twenty years. Of course the Constitution made other allowances for the peculiar institution of chattel slavery. Article 4, Section 2, provided that, in the event of a slave escaping to freedom in a northern state, she or he "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom Service or Labour may be due." And, most notorious, "the three-fifths compromise" of Article 1, Section 2, provided that, for purposes of determining representation in the Congress, every five slaves would count as three persons. In this was way slaves, who could not vote and had no political rights whatever, could nevertheless boost the political clout of the slave-holding states: more slave owners would sit in the Congress and vote against the interest of the slaves whom they were purportedly "representing" in a three-fifths sort of way. The text of the Constitution is here.
But this is not a pleasant part of our history to contemplate and does not therefore aid in the effort to be attractive to white voters. That Obama at least did not invoke all the usual platitudes is a kind of progress.
In the circles in which I move, populated mainly by white men who care who wins ball games, race seems rarely to be thought about outside the context of African Americans behaving badly--and then it is introduced as an explanatory tool. Many of my friends have a dim view of Bill Clinton but there is no racial aspect to what they take to be his crimes and misdemeanors. If, however, some black guy does not run out a two-hopper to shortstop--well, he should be happier to be in the major leagues, because if he wasn't he'd probably. . . .
You get the idea. Suddenly race has something to do with it. These guys aren't interested in what Barack Obama has to say on the subject--but, then, they weren't going to vote for him in any case.
Comments