Talking politics and race

….and strongly held beliefs. Funny, that phrase has until recently been a euphemism for ‘the religious right’, code language that cues readers or listeners to think about religious extremists who want to turn America into a theocracy. Pretty suddenly, it seems, all the presidential candidates and much of Congress talk about their faith and…strongly held beliefs.

Speaking of listeners and all the rest, yesterday on the way to a noon Mass (that turned into a prayer service when the priest was unavailable…) I heard a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh’s review of the weekend in Selma, Alabama with the candidates, and he made a good point that seems to have slipped by everyone else on the air. His transcripts are on his website, so here’s the particular snip from that segment:

OBAMA: We have too many children in poverty in this country, and everybody should be ashamed, but don’t tell me it doesn’t have a little to do with the fact that we got too many daddies not acting like daddies. Don’t think that fatherhood ends at conception.

RUSH: Don’t think that fatherhood ends at conception? That, ladies and gentlemen, is a pro-life statement. Somebody’s going to have to talk to him about this. It’s a bad move. It should have been, “Don’t think that fatherhood ends at birth.” Obama just said that life begins at conception, and you can’t say in the pro-choice community.

You know, he’s right. To equate fatherhood with conception is de facto to assume that conception begins the life of an unborn child.

That was before jumping out of the car. I got back in somewhere in the middle of a very interesting conversation between Limbaugh and a caller named Derek, who was engaging the issue of whether politics are pandering to blacks, and how much emphasis on blacks as a group, and the history of oppression, is helpful and how much is hurtful. Here’s the snip from that, and it’s Derek speaking:

I think that people make the mistake of not giving that information as a reference point, you know what I mean, because I’ll put it to you this way. America is the greatest country on earth. I wouldn’t want to live nowhere else. If they gave us free passage back to Africa, I’d tell ’em, “No thank you,” because I’ve never been to Africa. I’m not African. I’m American. And there’s no country on the planet that I can succeed in like this one.

He made a point I’ve wondered about and wanted to engage sometime in conversation. I’ve heard people say – not that long ago – that the correct term for blacks is African-Americans, though now both are equally applicable terms. But how applicable is the term ‘African-American’ in defining all blacks in America?

See, what I keep wondering these days is whether all the emphasis on the first black coaches to lead NFL teams to the Super Bowl, the first black presidential candidate and so on….keeps fostering the separation that we fought so hard as a nation to overcome these past 40 or so years. As I said during the Super Bowl buildup (and here in Chicago, it was all Bears all the time), when I look at Lovie Smith or Tony Dungy I don’t think ‘black man’ or ‘black coach’ at all. I think ‘wow, Lovie sure has more patience with Rex Grossman than most of the fans do right now…’ These men have a noble character that transcends color, certainly. They’re men who live their faith, and I’m more cognizant of how they handle themselves and treat others than I am of their color. It’s just a non-issue that I think we’re making a bigger issue of for the sake of…celebrating diversity and the achievements of minorities? We heard a lot of that when Nancy Pelosi was being sworn in as Speaker of the House. First woman. Great achievement. Now, how is the second person in line for the presidency (after the vice-president) going to carry out this role of leadership?

This is touchy, I know, but I’m thinking ‘out loud’ here to promote the idea that what unites us should be greater than what divides us. Derek says proudly that he’s an American, not an African. That should be an option for blacks, and we should start uniting under our shared beliefs and values, and celebrate the achievements of individuals for all of us and not by race and special interest groups.

In this presidential race that’s so early and overanalyzed already, there’s lots of speculation about the potential first woman president, first black president, first Hispanic president (once Bill Richardson enters the race), first Mormon president….and so on. We need a leader with great character, virtue, and the skills to transcend and overcome the forces that divide us. 

I didn’t mean to be on a soapbox here. I’m actually part of the crowd listening to the men and women who are on the soapbox, and trying to figure out who the leaders are. I think they will emerge.