Race and Politics in America

Today is primary day in Michigan. Unfortunately, only the Republicans are holding a meaningful primary. Because of intraparty squabbles, Barack Obama and John Edwards are not on the Democratic ballot, so Hillary Clinton appears likely to finish first in a highly diluted field.

The next meaningful battle for the Democrats will occur this weekend. While Republicans are holding the South Carolina primary on Saturday, Democrats will be looking for delegates in Nevada. With nearly 20% of its population Hispanic, Nevada has far greater ethnic diversity than either Iowa or New Hampshire.

Democrats in South Carolina (where nearly 30% of the population is black) will hold their primary on Jan. 26.

That, combined with the observance of Martin Luther King's birthday next Monday (his actual birthday is today), practically guaranteed that the emphasis in the campaign would shift from gender to race in mid-January. And so it has.

The Washington Post has devoted much space on its web site to the discussion of race and politics.

Joseph Califano, once secretary of the now defunct Department of Health, Education and Welfare under President Carter, says in today's Washington Post that it took the partnership of King and Lyndon Johnson to make civil rights advances a reality in this country.

"That's an example the presidential candidates and civil rights leaders of 2008 would be wise to follow," writes Califano, who was special assistant for domestic affairs in Johnson's administration.

But not all the articles about race and politics strike such a positive note as Califano's. Some raise some troubling questions.

Take, for example, Richard Cohen's column in today's Washington Post.

Cohen observes that Barack Obama's church in Chicago is Trinity United Church of Christ. A magazine that was launched by the church gives out awards annually to worthy recipients. Last year, it gave one such award to Louis Farrakhan, and it said he "truly epitomized greatness."

Cohen points out that the daughters of the church's minister serve as publisher and executive editor of the magazine.

That opens up a hornet's nest of issues.

Farrakhan has been responsible for a "rancid stew of lies," Cohen says, particularly about Jews, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Cohen acknowledges that he does not believe Obama shares Farrakhan's views. But Obama has declined to criticize the award because it was given to Farrakhan by the magazine, not by the church that started the magazine.

"This is a distinction without much of a difference," writes Cohen. "And given who the parishioner is, the obligation to speak out is all the greater. He could be the next American president. Where is his sense of outrage?"

Meanwhile, Adam Nagourney and Jennifer Steinhauer write in the New York Times about the Obama-Clinton battle for Hispanic voters in Nevada. Historically, there has been "tension" between blacks and Latinos, and even though Obama has been campaigning in a race-neutral way, they write, race clearly will be a factor when Latinos go to the caucuses in Nevada -- and the polls in other states.

The Hispanic vote could be even more important in the next three weeks, when primaries will be held in California, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona. And the black vote will be a factor in Southern primaries like Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee.

Neither race nor gender has ever been as important in evaluating candidates as both are in 2008. It's an unpleasant, although unavoidable, fact of life in a campaign that has the first serious female and black candidates for a presidential nomination.

And it's good for our culture to exorcise these demons -- if only so the next woman or person of color to run for president truly can campaign above the restrictive natures of gender and race.

In his column, Cohen concludes, "The rap on Obama is that he is a fog of a man. We know little about him, and, for all my admiration of him, I wonder about his mettle."

That is the kind of question a presidential campaign is supposed to answer. There are questions that can only be answered under crisis conditions in the crucible of the presidency. But some questions about character can be answered while voters are still making up their minds.

In the coming weeks and months, we'll see how well this campaign answers questions about race and gender and the characters of the leading candidates.

I hope we get the answers we need to make the right decision.