We’ve come a long way since a newspaper like the old Baltimore News American was afraid to endorse a black man for fear of losing subscribers. Today, papers like The Examiner (which endorsed McCain) make their decisions based on issues and not skin color.
That’s healthy for democracy.
Still, some of us watch Barack Obama and remember George L. Russell Jr., the first African-American to run seriously for mayor of Baltimore. The distance between Russell and Obama is measured in more than the 38 years between their campaigns. It’s also measured in America’s sensitivities on race.
Russell ran his campaign against an earnest young City Council president named William Donald Schaefer, who knew every street and alley and pothole in town. Schaefer was considered awkward and shy, a clunky speaker, but a hard-working drudge who labored late into each evening on the minutiae that bored everybody else to tears. Also, he was white.
Russell was a brilliant and polished attorney who had been city solicitor, a judge on the old Supreme Bench, and a man who presented his credentials to be mayor with a series of remarkably detailed position papers. He was thoughtful and elegant. Also, he was black.
In the closing weeks of that Democratic primary season, editors at the News American sat down to ponder which candidate to endorse.
“Russell’s a brilliant guy,” said veteran columnist Lou Azrael.
“I know,” said Tom White, the executive editor. “But, if we endorse him, we’ll lose 5,000 subscribers.”
He meant white subscribers. Schaefer won that Democratic primary pretty easily and went on to become the savior of his city, while Russell had a highly distinguished legal career. And here we are, 38 years later, with Obama the first African-American to run seriously for president and voters — and pollsters, too — wondering how far we’ve come in judging each other by our racial and ethnic differences.
Here’s one measure: such African-American leaders around here as Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele and Mayor Sheila Dixon.
Here’s another measure: “Editor and Publisher” reports 121 newspapers have now endorsed Obama, and 42 have endorsed John McCain. In states that voted for George W. Bush four years ago, Obama leads in endorsements, 48-28.
Clearly, there is something beyond race going on when so many newspapers published by white people, and dependent on so many white readers, are endorsing an African-American without worrying over the potential loss of subscribers.
But it would be nice if the candidates themselves showed as much maturity on matters of race and ethnicity because that matters to folks in Baltimore.
There are differences in America between the way millions of black and white people live their lives — and almost no discussion about these differences during the current campaign.
Who’s talked about the vast economic differences, the differences in education, in health care, in job opportunities? And who’s talked about family breakdown, and crime and punishment?
Obama gave one beautiful speech about race, in which he talked about “how hungry” Americans are for a message of unity, and how he numbers among his own family “every race and every hue” — and the sadness he feels caught between those who call him “too black” or “not black enough.”
But then he walked away from the subject. Even Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention was remarkable for how little it explicitly said about the historic crossroads moment, and how little it addressed specific gaps in the American dream. And McCain has said even less about it.
As the two presidential candidates speak around the country, their crowds are racially remarkable. McCain seems to have one black person visible somewhere behind him — but rarely more — as though this is the only one they could scrounge up and plop near the TV cameras so the crowds don’t look like apartheid South Africa.
And Obama seems to have an overwhelmingly high percentage of white people behind him — as though somebody in his campaign figures letting too many blacks in camera range might scare away potential white voters.
But we’re divided by more than black and white — and each campaign, in its way, has exploited this rather than face it head-on. The Republicans have spread rumors that Obama’s a Muslim. He’s responded that he’s a Christian.
Finally, it took Colin Powell to set everybody straight, when he endorsed Obama a week ago. Yes, Obama’s a Christian, Powell said.
But what if he wasn’t? What if he were Muslim? When that woman in McCain’s audience 10 days ago said she couldn’t vote for
Obama because “he’s an Arab,” McCain’s response wasn’t, “So what”? It was that Obama’s not an Arab, he’s a decent family man — as though the two are mutually exclusive.
Yes, we’ve come a long way. But we have a long way to go when the two men who wish to be president come from such different backgrounds — and, rather than offer serious discussion of race in America, they’ve used it for slander, or they’ve danced around it, or ignored it completely.
