Juan Williams has an eloquent — although, I’m afraid, futile — plea to Obama to, finally, “take a stand” on race issues. After paying hopeful homage to the promise he sees in Obama’s biracial background, Williams writes:
Yet given this central racial dynamic, it is incredible that on any issue of racial consequence Mr. Obama has become a stealth candidate. It is arguably smart politics not to focus on potentially controversial racial issues when you are a black man running in an election with an electorate that is more than 75% white. But how is it possible that Mr. Obama, as he rises to claim the mantle of Dr. King before 75,000 people and a national TV audience of millions here tonight, remains a mystery on the most important civil rights issues of our day?
Mr. Obama is nowhere man when it comes time to speak out on reforming big city public schools, with their criminally high dropout rates for minority children. He apparently refuses to do it for fear that supporting vouchers or doing anything to strengthen charter schools will alienate vote-rich unions. His rare references to the critical argument over affirmative action — an issue that is on several state ballots this fall — give both opponents and supporters reason to think he might be on their side. He has had little if anything to say about the persistent 25% poverty rate in black America.
The only speech Mr. Obama has given on race came after his minister’s racist rants became public. In that celebrated talk he defended Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while at the same time distancing himself from the rants. That quick escape did not work, because Rev. Wright continued to spew vitriol — threatening the campaign with questions about whether Mr. Obama subscribed to the same angry, anti-American views. It was only rational for voters to ask how he could have kept silent in the face of the minister’s sermons over 20 years.
Time and again, the man who draws so openly on King’s legacy refuses to sacrifice an iota of possible political support by taking a principled stand on matters of racial justice that King said are matters of right and wrong. Instead, Obama makes cryptic or general comments that leave his position on important racial issues ambiguous or unknown.
This plea, as I say, is eloquent, but it is also, I believe, based on a sense of Obama that derives much more from hope than clear analysis. On the most fundamantal “matter of right and wrong” that are at issue today — whether it is fitting and proper for the state to treat some people better and others worse because of their race — Obama’s position is neither ambiguous nor unknown.
Williams’ hopes and pleas to the contrary notwithstanding, Obama has been far more clear and uncompromising on this issue than on just about anything else: from his time in the Illinois legislature until today (we’ll see about tonight’s speech), he has never encountered a race preference policy or program that he opposes. And he has supported these programs actively, not passively. For example, he went into Michigan and made an ad opposing the ultimately successful Michigan Civil Rights Inititative, and he has made it clear that he opposes similar initiatives that would prohibit race preferences that will be on the ballots of several states this fall.
One of the reasons Williams’ plea sounds so forlorn is that he’s been making it, to no avail, for so long. Last fall, for example, he endorsed Obama in a New York Times OpEd, arguing, based on his ever-present hope but no evidence, that Obama “is asking voters to move with him beyond race and beyond the civil rights movement to a politics of shared values.” As I wrote at the time, criticizing that piece,
Perhaps Williams is right. Perhaps Obama does represent the Great White, or Black, hope of moving beyond race. But at this point in the race I’m afraid that Obama may be speaking “color lines” rather than providing a bridge across the color line and hence that Williams may be engaging more in wishful thinking than astute analysis….
I believe there is a way that Williams could be right, that there is an opening for a black politician to appeal to blacks and whites to unite around shared values, but so far I have not been convinced that Obama is willing or able to do that, although there have been one or two encouraging hints. One of the most fundamental values that blacks and whites share, at least on one level, is a lingering attachment to the principle that has been discarded both by black “civil rights” leaders and white elites in academia, the media, and large corporations: the old core value holding that people should be treated “without regard” to race, creed, color, or national origin. (I continue to wait, in vain, for the day some brave journalist will ask Democratic presidential candidates whether or not they believe in that principle.)
….
I believe “shared values” do indeed provide a bridge that can unite the races, but, so far at least, it has proved to be a bridge too far for Obama to cross.
Let’s see whether he crosses it tonight in his speech to the masses from the set that looks like a Greek or Roman temple.
Don’t hold your breath.
One correction to Mr. Williams, the U.S. is not 75% white. The figure for “non-Hispanic” white is actually 66%. I am not a fan of white nationalistis, but it is significant that in 1960 the U.S. was 90% non-Hispanic white. Many parts of the U.S. are now dominated, in terms of population or political power by non-whites, e.g. Detroit and the state of New Mexico.
Obama has successfully forged a “rainbow coalition” with near-universal Black support and near 70% Hispanic support. This coalition is strongly in favor of racial preferences, and it would be suicidal for Obama to come out against such policies. Obama if President will not be the “post-racial” candidate but will make us even more fragmented than before.
I find Juan Williams a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. Here he’s dead on here addressing the cause, education, rather than glossing the effects over with racial preferences. His willingness to look at the issue honestly and evaluate vouchers, charters, and everything else is refreshing in a world where far too many “critics” of education eliminate solutions because of their political implications.
If I were McCain I would take a lesson from Williams (after the election). Far more blacks, especially parents, support these issues than is generally understood. McCain should partner with some of these groups to address the matter. Nothing is ever going to lessen racial animosity until black economic circumstances improve. And there will be no improvement as long as we allow our education system to put education third, behind jobs-for-life and local political cronyism.