Same Script, Different Day
By Alan Jenkins
January 29th, 2008
http://www.ourfuture.org/progressive-opinion/same-script-different-day

For those of us who study the interaction of race,
politics and the media, the events of the last few weeks
in the Clinton-Obama electoral slugfest were painfully
familiar: A white candidate or that candidate's
surrogates say or do something that African Americans
will find racially insensitive, but that is likely to go
over the heads of other Americans and, especially, white
voters. When the black candidate's supporters react,
complaining of racial insensitivity, the white
candidate's camp displays feigned bewilderment and
invokes the "racial sensitivity as racism" script:

Why are you people so obsessed with race? We didn't
mention race, so you're just being overly sensitive,
divisive, and "playing the race card." The American
public wants to get beyond race, why can't you?

The black candidate is left sputtering, trying to
explain why, really, it was the other side that played
the race card. By that time, the white candidate has
moved on to address other issues, because the news media
now have the opening they need to keep the race question
alive indefinitely, without any new bait from either
side.

This script is designed to make voters choose racial
sides. Should they abandon the white candidate for
making remarks that, though neutral on their face, have
offended many African Americans? Or should they shy away
from the black candidate and his or her supporters for
an unsavory and confusing focus on the divisive issue of
race? More troubling, the script inevitably makes the
black candidate just that -- a black candidate -- in the
media public mind, while the white candidate remains
just a candidate, one for "all the people."

Because most non-African Americans don't understand the
racial subtext of the original comments -- or, at least,
don't feel their sting as acutely -- and because most
believe that racial bias is generally a thing of the
past, those voters tend to gravitate toward the white
candidate as the race-neutral, less divisive one.

The script played out in the 1980s with Jesse Helms'
"hands" ad against Harvey Gantt in North Carolina, and
in 2006 in the "call me" ad against Harold Ford in
Tennessee. Even George H.W. Bush's Willie Horton ad
against Michael Dukakis was a form of this ploy, though
in this case it was directed toward a white candidate.

Each of these ads was ostensibly about race-neutral
facts and opinion. But each had its intended effect of
racializing and, thereby, neutralizing the black (or, in
Dukakis's case, liberal) candidate.

In the latest case, the script was triggered by a flurry
of actions by the Clinton camp, including Hillary
Clinton diminishing the importance of Dr. Martin Luther
King's achievements; Mrs. Clinton's surrogates,
according to The New York Times, "pushing hard the line
that a woman president would be 'the real' change"; and
Bill Clinton comparing Obama's landslide victory in
South Carolina to, of all things, Jesse Jackson's
Pyrrhic victories in that state's primary in 1984 and
1988.

When Obama supporters -- and many who do not support
Obama-objected to the tone and implication of these
kinds of statements, they were met with act two of the
script: Bill Clinton told a crowd in Charleston, S.C.,
"It is wrong to accuse somebody who has a disagreement
with Senator Obama of being a racist." He told reporters
that Mrs. Clinton "did not play the race card, but
(Obama's campaign) did. They are feeding you this,
because they know this is what you want to cover. This
is what you live for ... Shame on you. Shame on you."
And he reprimanded CNN reporter Jessica Yellin, saying:
"This is almost like once you accuse someone of racism
and bigotry, the facts become irrelevant. The first
thing I'd like to say: You asked me about this. Not one
single solitary citizen asked about any of this, and
they never do." The former president nailed every major
line of the script.

Bill Clinton is at least half right. The press can't get
enough of the race script, and that is likely to follow
Obama into the February 5 "Super Tuesday" primaries --
despite the sizable numbers of non-black voters he's
attracted in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and, now, South
Carolina.

Now, it is certainly possible that Hillary Clinton did
not fully understand what she was unleashing with her
comments about Dr. King, or where her husband and staff
would go with it. But the script is now in full swing,
and it will now take affirmative intervention to
interrupt it.

Given Obama's victory in South Carolina, it might appear
to some that the script failed in this instance. But, in
fact, it served its intended purpose. As Patrick
Buchanan (a master of the script) explained on CNN the
night of the South Carolina primary, making both the
Obama campaign and the South Carolina primary about race
allows pundits and voters to frame that victory as a
triumph of racial politics, as opposed to Super Tuesday,
when millions of "real" Americans will cast their vote.
Losing South Carolina, and many black voters around the
country, was worth doing, in his estimate, in return for
Super Tuesday. Indeed, following the script, CNN
commentators as this column went to press were
describing South Carolina a "race primary." No one else
in either campaign has to utter another word about race
for the race script to continue playing, with its
intended effect.

The big question, though, is whether Obama's victory
speech in South Carolina will have the effect of shaming
not just the Clinton campaign, but also the lion's share
of media pundits and political reporters out of
perpetuating the racial script.

Obama's speech both outed the script and attempted to
transcend it. He tried to convince voters that
supporting him irrespective of his race, rather than
fearing him as a "race candidate," is actually the
American thing to do. Like JFK's speech allaying fears
about his Catholicism, Obama did not deny or degrade his
race; but he denied being defined by it.

Of course race, unlike religion, is neither a belief
system nor a characteristic that one can change. What
Obama was really renouncing, then, was the script's
depiction of black politicians as race men, concerned
only -- or at least primarily -- with helping members of
their own group overcome race-based barriers. Only time
will tell whether Obama's response is enough to flip the
script.

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