"If Obama were a white man"

I really hate seeing this epoch-making campaign turn so ugly. Maybe ugly's the wrong word. Graceless and petty, anyway.

Geraldine Ferraro says, "I am not a racist." Big surprise that she would think that.

There are extremes in the American view of race. On the right are the out-and-out bigots. Mercifully, they are much rarer than they used to be. I was just watching Richard Pryor, and much of his stand-up is now dated, despite the obvious and painful truths of it. On the left are those who say that all of us white people are irredeemably racist. Of course, the entire history of the United States is marked by race and racism, but the inability of these leftists to distinguish degrees makes their critique strident and useless.

Ferraro may want "these people" to appreciate what she has done for them. This sort of formulation, if it is deep-down hers, was once long ago forward-thinking on race, but it now reveals acceptance of the grouping of people into us vs. them, and we've realized in the meantime that that's a problem. Perhaps not in her case, but this is a real scenario.

There is a sense in which Obama wouldn't be where he is if he were white, because he would likely not be the extraordinary person he is if he were lily white. He is who he is because of all his attributes and background, and race is one of the most important.

Of course, Obama is white, too, just as he is black. He grew up under the care of his white mother and grandparents. If the one-drop definition is something we still accept, then we ought to remember that we all came out of Africa, just some of us earlier than others. Maybe even the palest white people like me, some of whom wanted their melanin challenge to be something precious because it was theirs, can find the pride in that. Yeah, for many, that'll be a while. Still, the progress since I was a little white boy in segregated Memphis is real.

The real truth of where Obama would be is that a speaker and a presence and a thinker and a motivator such as he would already own the Democratic nomination if he were white. He is not an ordinary politician. I say that as a late convert to the cause, knowing that his appeal is emotionally visceral, even though there's also clearly substance there. But even when I supported John Edwards, I could recognize Obama's gifts.

There is also a sense in which Hillary would not be where she is if she were a man. And, no, I don't mean that she'd be nowhere if she had not married Bill. Her life experience as a female is important, too, and of course not everyone can see past her sex to everything else she has to offer. There are still Democrats even, older men mostly, who won't vote for a woman. But there are also women over 80 (and I'm thinking of one in particular) who passionately want to see the day they never thought they'd see when a woman is President.

This time around, we'll only get a shot at one demographic check mark. That should be a win-win, but it seems to be turning into a lose-lose. Sad.

Update: Here's a more charitable interpretation of Ferraro's comments.