Discriminations

According to this article in Sunday’s The Hill newspaper, the leading candidates to replace Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the Senate, should they be elected president and vice president, are Jessie Jackson’s son, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., and Joe Biden’s son, Beau Biden. Both fathers are said to be eager to have their sons inherit their seats.

Jackson’s case is strengthened by the fact that Obama is the only African-American member of the Senate. Presumably, Obama would like to see at least one African-American representative in the chamber.

Really? Don’t Senators represent states, not races? And doesn’t future president Obama present himself as post-racial? Isn’t he on record (quoted here) saying “There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America”?

Never mind, since he’s also on record defending the practice of providing preferential treatment to some Americans based on their race. Or maybe Illinois (or at least the Democratic Party in Illinois), unlike the United States of America whose unity Obama praises when it suits him, maintains a vestigial political culture still made up of clearly defined racial and ethnic tribes.

That certainly seems to be the case, for The Hill reports that

it’s not a slam-dunk for Jackson. [Governor] Blagojevich must pick a candidate who can hold the seat in 2010, when the temporary two-year appointment would expire.

Some Democratic strategists question whether Jackson can win statewide.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who’s white and is very close to organized labor, has made it clear that she also would like to move into Obama’s Senate seat.

Democrats in Schakowsky’s camp argue that she would run more successfully in Southern Illinois and tout her strong ties to the labor community. They also tout her energy and record of accomplishment in Congress. She is one of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) closer friends.

But Gov. Blagojevich’s choice is not, as it were, black and white, since there is a third choice (a candidate that, in other contexts, might be described as a dark horse).

Blagojevich may go outside the Illinois House delegation. One possible candidate would be Tammy Duckworth, director of the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Duckworth, who is Asian-American, could serve as a compromise candidate on the race question.

Racialism has really run amuck when a reporter can write, with an apparently straight face, that an Asian-American is “a compromise candidate on the race question.”

If racialism remains that pervasive, we are all compromised beyond redemption.