The Caucasian Card
It can be tough being black in America. But the tough stuff builds character. Maybe that's why Barack Obama got this far this fast.
Anna Quindlen
NEWSWEEK
Updated: Aug 9, 2008
Much of America's political conversation is couched in code. And so it was that recently the McCain campaign accused Barack Obama of playing the "race card," two four-letter words that, taken together, trail a wealth of innuendo like a comet's tail.
Using the term "race card" as a pejorative is almost always meant to promulgate the big lie that takes hold everywhere from the workplace to the classroom: that black men and women commonly use race as a bludgeon and an excuse, and that they will always blame failures or disagreements on racism.
This is belied by objective reality. To hear tell, you would believe that the world is chockablock with minority lawyers, teachers, construction workers and police officers who spend all their time complaining about institutional racism, calling others out on offensive jokes and assumed stereotypes. But most of us encounter the opposite, the silence of people who learned a long time ago that to get along it's imperative to go along.
In part this is because they're carrying a load on their shoulders. When one of the white guys blows an account, the office line is that he's a loser. But when a black guy does it, it means that they—that's the all-purpose "they," sometimes used interchangeably with "those people"—don't seem to be able to close the deal. Same goes for women, which is one reason the Clinton-Obama rivalry got so pitched during the primaries. Our piece of the pie is small, and often there's only one fork. When someone like Senator McCain says he's opposed to quotas, it sounds like country-club code for "We liked the pie the old way."
(Continued here.)
Anna Quindlen
NEWSWEEK
Updated: Aug 9, 2008
Much of America's political conversation is couched in code. And so it was that recently the McCain campaign accused Barack Obama of playing the "race card," two four-letter words that, taken together, trail a wealth of innuendo like a comet's tail.
Using the term "race card" as a pejorative is almost always meant to promulgate the big lie that takes hold everywhere from the workplace to the classroom: that black men and women commonly use race as a bludgeon and an excuse, and that they will always blame failures or disagreements on racism.
This is belied by objective reality. To hear tell, you would believe that the world is chockablock with minority lawyers, teachers, construction workers and police officers who spend all their time complaining about institutional racism, calling others out on offensive jokes and assumed stereotypes. But most of us encounter the opposite, the silence of people who learned a long time ago that to get along it's imperative to go along.
In part this is because they're carrying a load on their shoulders. When one of the white guys blows an account, the office line is that he's a loser. But when a black guy does it, it means that they—that's the all-purpose "they," sometimes used interchangeably with "those people"—don't seem to be able to close the deal. Same goes for women, which is one reason the Clinton-Obama rivalry got so pitched during the primaries. Our piece of the pie is small, and often there's only one fork. When someone like Senator McCain says he's opposed to quotas, it sounds like country-club code for "We liked the pie the old way."
(Continued here.)
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