Race: The stealth issue of the campaign

last updated 8 January 2015

Stacey Dash obviously did not read the “black memo,” said Crystal Wright in WashingtonPost.com. Dash, an actress of black and Mexican descent who won middling fame for her role in 1995’s Clueless, recently tweeted her support for Mitt Romney for president. Her nine-word endorsement, accompanied by a pinup photo, “uncorked racist rage from Obama supporters,” who alerted Dash to the unspoken rule that “all blacks must vote for Democrats.” On Twitter, African-Americans called her a “traitor” and a “house nigger,” mocking her hair, her heritage, and her intelligence. The insults all boiled down to one message, said Jesse Washington in the Associated Press. “A black woman would have to be stupid, subservient, or both to choose a white Republican over the first black president.”

Ugly rhetoric aside, there are good reasons why so few blacks support Romney, said Sherrilyn Ifill in CNN.com. The GOP’s assault on Obama from day one has been fueled by outrage that such an interloper could occupy the highest office in the land. He has been dismissed as “lazy” and stupid, and called the “welfare president” and the “food stamp president.” A congressman interrupted a presidential address by shouting, “You lie!” Millions of Republican “birthers” still insist against all evidence that Obama was born in Kenya and is thus an illegitimate president. For blacks, all this represents “an assault on our collective racial dignity.” The appeals to bigotry are not even coded, said David Sirota in Salon.com. A few weeks ago, conservative activists dredged up a 2007 Obama speech on Hurricane Katrina to a mostly black audience, and criticized the president for supposed “calls to racial solidarity,” while using a “phony” black accent.

Race still matters—and it would be ridiculous to pretend it doesn’t, said Orson Aguilar in The Sacramento Bee. Polls indicate that 94 percent of African-Americans will vote for Obama, while about 60 percent of whites will vote for Romney. Why such a wide gulf? And what about the wealth gap between the races? For every dollar of white family wealth, the median Asian family has about 63 cents, the Latino family has 7 cents, and the black family has less than a nickel. Americans deserve to hear both candidates address the obvious racial and ethnic divisions in our society, and what they plan to do about them. “Please, gentlemen, play the race card. But for once, do it honestly and without fear.”