While this country has made great strides toward genuine racial equality over the last 50 years, we're still hampered by a race-consciousness that lurks just below the surface, in our reptilian brains, where stereotype, prejudice and unconscious judgments override rational considerations. That's true for all of us — black, white and brown.
oldstyleliberal is white, and although he intends to vote for Obama in the upcoming Maryland Democratic primary, he has to admit there were parts of Obama's victory speech in Iowa during which he had to tamp down a negative reaction to the vocal cadences Obama was employing, which he realized were right out of the African-American pulpit. Whoa, thought oldstyleliberal. Where did Obama, who wasn't raised in such a church, pick that up — from Al Sharpton?
Another part of oldstyleliberal's brain duly kicked in and said something like, "Shame on me for even feeling that." If Obama, whom some African-Americans have deemed "not black enough," can't appropriate the rhythmic, rhyming cadences and grunts of a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton, how can he possibly bring American blacks along with him into a new ethos of political "change."
All of us, black, white, or brown, respond to what one might call "extra-rational" rhetorical cues that are intended to say, "You and I are the same." But if these cues are designed to pull some folks toward a candidate, other folks who might otherwise feel a bit alienated by them have to be smart enough to cut that candidate, who after all wants to lead us all toward some brighter day, a degree of slack. Right?
All of which brings up the question, just how do we decide, individually and corporately, what our opinions are about candidates and their programs? As Ms. Tucker says, there's a lot going on just below the surface, in our "reptilian" brains, which we can't very well admit to, but which might wind up making all the difference in the world.
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