Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

Race and the race

Do not let anyone fool you. While Barack Obama is doing well in the polls, there is a significant portion of the electorate who sees him as nothing more than a black man — not as a Harvard graduate, former community organizer, lawyer, state legislator or U.S. Senator, but as a black man.

That, in their eyes, makes him different than the rest of us, than white America. That’s the subtext of much of what the Clinton campaign’s late strategy was and why we are witnessing a full-out focus on Obama’s middle name, the flag pin, the Muslim rumors.

And we shouldn’t expect it to die off anytime soon.

I was at a barbecue today when the conversation turned to politics. I opted to remain in the background today, mostly because the tenor of the conversation lacked any real substance, building on innuendo and ad hominem attacks to take the discussion nowhere.

On one side were a couple of 18-year-old Obama supporters, who hit all the candidate’s buzzwords — change, McCain’s 100-year war — while on the other side were the generally older McCain supporters touting his experience and Obama’s lack thereof.

It was an amusing display, including a side-argument over abortion and Catholics (I may have been the only non-Catholic there) that featured the canard about falling African-American birth rates due to abortion.

The 18-year-old –I’ve decided not to name anyone because it was just a graduation party and not a political caucus — said that he thought there was a racial element involved, that some McCain supporters were backing the Republican because of his race. He said that many of his family members — erstwhile Democrats — were planning to vote for a Republican.

His uncle chimed in that he would never support Obama because “next thing you know, you’d have Sharpton in the White House,” proving the kid’s point.

The conversation, while amusing, was also disheartening, revealing the undercurrent of racism that remains out there. I’ve not had any illusions about this, but it really hits home when you confront it straight on like this.

What I’m hoping, at this point, is that the racism is out in the open — or at least accounted for in the polling and that we don’t have what is called the Bradley Effect (polls showing a black candidate leading because many respondents were afraid to say they wouldn’t support him; Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder and New York Mayor David Dinkins all experienced a variation of this). I don’t mean to imply that this is the only way McCain can win but, if it did play out this way, it would be particular divisive and call into question all the progress we’ve made on race relations over the years.

My hope is that the candidate who is most in tune with voters’ beliefs, who best understands their concerns and offers the most forward-looking plan will win and that race won’t be the determining factor.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Saturday reading: A perusal of the op-eds

Some worthwhile reading today:

  • Colbert King, The Washington Post, “Two Speeches, Two Truths About America“

    • It makes you wonder how Independence Day orators 150 years from now will look back upon this Fourth of July.

    What will they make of freedom-loving people who, at the dawn of America’s fourth century as a nation, question the patriotism of a U.S. senator because he doesn’t wear a flag pin in his lapel or because he has a name that doesn’t sound like theirs?

    What will they say about our professed fidelity to religious freedom when they find out that many of the Americans who thank God for their religious liberty are also ready to turn their backs on a candidate if they think he is a Muslim or Mormon?

    Or because he’s black?

    What, come to think of it, would Frederick Douglass think?

  • Bob Herbert, The New York Times, “Cause for Alarm“

    • The U.S., with its enormous economic and military power, is still better-positioned than any other country to set the standards for the 21st century. But that power and leadership potential were not granted by divine right and cannot be wasted indefinitely.

    Patriotism has its place. But waving a flag is never a good substitute for serious thought and rolling up one’s sleeves.

  • The Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, The Record, “Presidential candidates should stop misusing religion“

    • The candidates have sought the endorsements of clergy, and both McCain and Obama are now having some buyer’s remorse. But candidates cannot have it both ways. They cannot continue to use clergy for political gain and then discard them when it no longer fits their agenda.

    The problem is not that these presidential candidates incorporated religion into their campaigns. The problem is that the candidates have used religion as a divisive tool, instead of a unifying power.

    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

    Wet and worth it

    We just got back from the high school, where the township hosted its annual fireworks display. We arrived as the Philadelphia Funk Authority (I’ll refrain from saying anything about them) was finishing up and the rain was slowly building. They shut the band early and kicked off the fireworks before dark. A nice display, even in the rain, hanging with family amid the local faithful.

    The thing about an evening like this is that it can remind us what patriotism is supposed to be about — a shared sense of ourselves. I am a fierce critic of the current administration and much of what our government has done in our names across its history, but I remain a staunch defender of the basic values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, viewing them as a plan for our future, knowing that the nation we live in has not always been the best that it can be and appreciating those special Americans who have been willing to fight to make it better– people like Mother Jones and Martin Luther King Jr., the Wobblies and the Yippies, the two Father Berrigans, the muckraking journalists of the Progressive Era, the Populist movement, the suffragists and so on.

    Happy 4th, everyone.

    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.