Crossing the Lines on Race and Gender

In the Orange County Register, John Ziegler makes an interesting comparison between the behavior of the first black star athlete in golf, Tiger Woods, and the first serious black presidential candidate, Barack Obama.

After acknowledging that "Woods technically is more Asian than black and Obama is as white as he is black," Ziegler points out that "there are stark differences in the way that Tiger Woods and Barack Obama have approached the issue of race in their careers."

One should read the column in its entirety, but essentially it points out that Woods' reaction to racial references by others is more mature now than it was 10 years ago -- when he was younger and inexperienced and still under the guidance of his father.

Today, Woods' father (who, in Ziegler's words, "was known to be far more militant on racial issues" than his son) has been deceased for nearly two years, and Woods essentially brushes off perceived racial slights that might have provoked more of a response when Earl Woods was alive.

(In Earl's defense, he was born in the Great Depression, orphaned in his teen years, and received a baseball scholarship to Kansas State University, where he was a racial pioneer, breaking the conference's "color barrier" in 1951. Pioneers have to have thick skins -- and they tend to be less tolerant than those who come later. That comes, I suppose, from not having the luxury of standing on someone else's shoulders but instead having to stand on your own two feet, however shaky they -- or the ground beneath them -- may be.)

Not so with Obama.

A good case in point is the recent handling of Geraldine Ferraro, herself a groundbreaking vice presidential nominee for the Democrats 24 years ago. Ferraro asserted that Obama, who has served slightly more than half of his six-year term as U.S. senator, would not be in the position he is in if not for the fact that he is black.

On the subject of experience, it can be argued that Ferraro herself probably wouldn't have qualified for a spot on a national ticket in 1984 if not for a characteristic over which she had no control -- her gender.

At the time, she had never been a candidate for statewide office in New York (she did seek the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate twice in the 1990s -- both times unsuccessfully. And it can be further argued that she might never have been in the position to run for the Senate if she had not been on the national ticket in 1984).

Before 1978, Ferraro's career consisted of service as a teacher, lawyer and member of the Queens County District Attorney's Office (a non-elective post).

She was elected to the House of Representatives in 1978 and re-elected in 1980 and 1982 before Walter Mondale chose her to be his running mate in 1984. (In a truly revealing political cartoon of the day, Mondale was shown standing next to a Ferrari with F-E-R-R-A-R-O written on it and saying "Just think of the chicks I'll get with this!")

The idea was that Ferraro's presence on the ticket would help Mondale bridge the perceived "gender gap" in American politics, but the eventual results failed to demonstrate either the existence of such a gap or Ferraro's ability to swing votes to the Democrats because of it. Incumbent President Ronald Reagan was re-elected easily, carrying 49 states and receiving nearly 59% of the popular vote.

Anyway, this week Ferraro resigned her post with Hillary Clinton's finance committee after being criticized by Obama's campaign for her remarks. Ferraro's resignation apparently was voluntary. "I feel terrible for the fact that Hillary is stuck in this thing," Ferraro told the New York Times. "Why put her in that position?"

The day after Ferraro's resignation, the New York Times ran an article in which Patrick Healy and Jeff Zeleny reported, "[Obama] said he was puzzled at how, after more than a year of campaigning, race and sex are at the forefront as never before."

Puzzled?

Obama may have been puzzled, but the Times reporters weren't. They went on to observe that "race, as well as sex, have been unavoidable subtexts of the Democratic campaign since the two candidates began seeking to be the first African-American or the first woman to lead a party’s presidential ticket. In the primaries and caucuses this winter, too, Mrs. Clinton has enjoyed substantial support from women, while Mr. Obama has increasingly drawn overwhelming votes from blacks."

And the racial divide has never been as pronounced, perhaps, as it was in Tuesday's primary. Mississippi, "a state where the electorate has historically been racially polarized, generated one of the most divided votes," the Times observed. "Mrs. Clinton received 8% of the black vote, and Mr. Obama received 26% of the white vote, according to exit polls by Edison/Mitofsky for The Associated Press and television networks."

This nation has been electing presidents since 1788. Constitutional amendments gave blacks the right to vote nearly 80 years later and gave women the right to vote in 1920. Only one Democratic or Republican candidate for vice president (Ferraro) was not male, and none of the candidates for president were black or female.

In this country women have won Senate seats and governor's offices, and they continue to hold them in many states. Blacks have won considerably fewer Senate seats, less than a handful (including the one Obama holds). And, if New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigns as he has said he will next week, his successor will be only the fourth black governor in American history.

But this year, the Democratic candidate for president will be black or female.

And, as the campaign drags on longer than most people ever anticipated, the rhetoric becomes more heated on both sides.

That's appropriate, I guess. Harry Truman, who liked to say "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," called the presidency "the hottest kitchen on earth." So it's only fitting that those who want to occupy it for the next four years should be subjected to some of the heat now.

But, after all, it's only March 15. The Democratic convention in Denver won't be held until August. There's a lot of time left to resolve this.

For that matter, Mondale's nomination still wasn't mathematically clinched after the 1984 primaries had concluded in June. But, by the time the convention was held the next month, he had secured the support of enough delegates to wrap it up. He even announced Ferraro's selection about a week before the convention -- much earlier than nominees tended to do prior to that time.

Maybe Naftali Bendavid of the Chicago Tribune has the answer. The party, Bendavid suggests, needs a Yoda -- an elder statesman to resolve the issue.

You can't turn to the most recent Democratic president for that, though. He's married to one of the candidates, and I guess you could say that represents a conflict of interest.

But a political scientist from Iowa State University threw some cold water on the "elder statesman" notion, anyway.

"Even if there were a group of party heavyweights," the political scientist told Bendavid, "their choice would most likely be John Edwards, and not the two exciting but risky front-runners."