June 3, 2008

Much has been said about the role that racism may play in the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election. So, for instance, commentators opine about the extent to which racism among certain whites may make the difference in defeating Senator Obama in November. Some suggest the effect of such bias could be quite large, while others take a more optimistic view, still convinced that Obama has an appeal that can "transcend race." But whatever the case may be when it comes to voters, one thing is clear: throughout the campaign season, media commentators have framed issues in such a way as to often reinforce racial division, and make it harder for us to examine race issues honestly.

First, consider the way in which the media long framed the Democratic contest: essentially as a race between "a woman and a black guy"--a phrase that was offered over and again in the press, and among voters as well. Sometimes commentators remarked upon this fact with pride, as if to say, "Isn't it great that we've made such progress on racism and sexism?" But whatever the motivation, the terminology itself has been instructive. By framing the Democratic candidates in this way, the media effectively rendered Clinton raceless. She has a gender identity--and we certainly discussed to what extent that may have hurt her with male voters--and he has both a race and gender identity (and we discussed how the first could hurt him with some white voters, and whether the second may have helped him with certain men), but she was characterized, bizarrely, as a racially neutral being. It's as if Obama's race could be an impediment to him, without Clinton's whiteness thereby working to her benefit--an obvious absurdity, but one that was concretized by a media that ignores whiteness and frames race as if it were an issue only for persons of color.

Needless to say, John McCain, Obama's presumptive opponent in the fall, is never discussed as a racialized being. One can expect the media to bring up his age--as if to suggest that for some voters, his advanced years might hurt him, or, conversely, to contrast his age and therefore experience, with the younger age and less experience of Senator Obama--but McCain's whiteness will remain undiscussed. Race will be seen as an issue with only side--and a potentially negative one at that, for Obama--as if whiteness were a neutral category, even as blackness were, in the minds of some, negative.

By keeping whiteness invisible (to whites at least, seeing as how it's pretty hard for folks of color to miss it), the media contributes to an environment in which having a productive dialogue about race becomes nearly impossible. After all, how can whites engage in such a dialogue, if we can't even see the issue as being relevant to our lives? How can we take the discussion seriously if we're encouraged to view race as something only people of color have? How can we fairly consider the perspectives of others if we are led to believe that those others have views that are tainted by racialized-bias, while our perspectives as whites, since whiteness is not named or problematized, are racially-objective, "normal," and thus, likely to be more accurate as a result?

Or consider the problematic use of terminology such as "working class" to describe certain voters, and how it has tended to presume the normalcy of whiteness, in a way that reinforces racial hierarchy.

Prior to Hillary Clinton's infamous quip, in which working folks and whites were explicitly linked--to wit, her claim that she was better than Obama when it came to reaching "hard-working Americans, white Americans"--it had become routine for the media to make the same connection, albeit implicitly. So for several weeks after the Pennsylvania primary, for instance, the common media question was whether or not Obama could "win working class voters." Never mind the fact that he already was, at least black working class voters. By implicitly equating "working class" with white (since it was primarily white working class folks he was having a problem with), the media reinforced the notion of "hard-working," and "normal" folks as white. This then left blacks to be viewed either as the decidedly non-working and dreaded "underclass," or the elitist types that Hillary Clinton wanted people to envision when they thought of Senator Obama. Either of these images can then easily reinforce racism, either by stoking white fear of the former or resentment toward the latter. Although many in the press became more sensitive to the problem with such a conflation in the wake of Clinton's gaffe, it is still common to hear "working class" and white used as if they were synonymous.

Or consider the way the media responded to the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Although much attention has been paid to black anger in the wake of Rev. Wright's largely-taken-out-of-context comments, and although some have tried to explain the place of such righteous indignation within the black church and community, the framing of the issue has reinforced the white perspective as normal, and thus, valid. So we have been asked to wonder "Why are some black people so angry?" rather than, "Why are some white people so complacent?" about racial injustice.

White complacency is seen as normal, while black anger is taken as the pathology to be understood, ultimately making them the problem. Their perspectives are the ones that are strange and in need of explanation, but ours (if we're white) are perfectly fine and need not be explained or defended to anyone. Such a normalizing of the white perspective only makes it more likely that whites will be hostile to those who think and view the world differently. Indeed, on those rare occasions when a white person does see the world similarly to black folks, it is then and only then that their perspectives will be questioned and held up to negative scrutiny. Thus, the avalanche of not just anger, but outright confusion that met the remarks of Father Michael Pfleger, when he spoke recently in Obama's former church about the mentality of entitlement so common to white elites like the Clintons. Although there was certainly reason to criticize the remarks for including what could be seen as a sexist mocking of Senator Clinton, it wasn't that which provoked the controversy, so much as the fact that a white man was speaking black truth, and being well-received by black folks in the process. For many white folks, the sight of such a thing made no sense. It's one thing, after all, for so-called crazy black folks to see the world this way, but when one of ours says the same stuff, aw hell no! Now we really have a problem

So if many, indeed most in the African American community think the United States government has engaged in state terrorism (as Wright claimed, using historical examples to make the point, which examples do indeed fit the very definition of terrorism used by our own State Department), while whites find such a claim absurd, it is the white perspective that is to be credited as normal, sober, rational, objective, and true. Whites will not have to actually respond to the charges laid out by Wright or other black folks--we will not have to offer counterarguments, or even familiarize ourselves with the evidence as presented by those making the claim--but can simply brush them off as the rantings of lunatics and move on.

If many black folks believe the government may have created AIDS as a way to target and destroy certain populations (or at least find this plausible, given the long history of government medical experimentation on, and deliberate spreading of disease to its own citizens, chronicled in the award-winning book Medical Apartheid), while whites find the suggestion ridiculous (perhaps even seditious), the white perception is the one that will carry the day. And this is true, even though almost none of the white folks dismissing the charge have ever examined the evidence one way or the other. And the media will not explore the charge, and will not examine the evidence for the claim (and there is such evidence presented by those who believe this theory, putting aside it's persuasiveness). In this way the white perspective becomes a form of perspectivism: an unquestioned, uninterrogated and therefore unassailable truth, deviation from which will be treated as irrationality or worse.

Of course, it's not only this election where the media has normalized whiteness, or made it altogether invisible, so that its consequences can't even be seen, let alone understood.

Consider the 2004 Presidential race, after which most every talking head noted that President Bush had won the "evangelical vote," and claimed that the nation was divided between "blue states" and "red states."

In the first instance, commentators failed to notice that the President most certainly did not win the black evangelical vote, but only the white evangelical vote. Black evangelicals voted against him by at least four to one. Saying that "evangelicals" supported the President, as the media did, marginalized Christians of color, whose sense of religious duty compelled them to vote differently than their white brothers and sisters. Why? Who knows? No one thought to ask.

As for blue states and red states, the notion of a geographic divide in this country is largely mythical. Most whites in the blue states--including New York, California, Illinois, Michigan and Maryland--either voted for Bush, or split 50-50 between Bush and Kerry. Meanwhile, in the red states, people of color voted overwhelmingly against the President. In other words, the real divide was racial, not regional. By ignoring this truth, the media ducked the hard questions about why whites and folks of color often view our country so differently, and come to such different conclusions about what would be best for the nation politically.

But it is this kind of question we need to confront in order to have a truly productive conversation about race in America. That our respective racial identities often shape the way we view our national past, present and desired future--and therefore, often cause tension because we can't fathom where "the other guy" is coming from--is the truth that won't go away.

If we are to make progress on the road to racial equity, it is this truth we will have to confront, and which the media must address, rather than continuing to obscure it behind a veil of whiteness that dare not speak its name.