Opinion Cynthia Tucker
Cynthia
Tucker is editorial page editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a
syndicated columnist whose commentary appears in dozens of newspapers across
the country.
RACIAL STEREOTYPES ARE DEEPLY
EMBEDDED IN OUR CULTURE
Sat
Jan 19, 7:56 PM ET
After a recent
column describing Barack Obama as "a
presidential candidate who happens to be black -- not a black presidential
candidate," I received countless responses from readers, a handful of them
odd. That odd handful declared they take no notice of superficial traits such
as skin color, and they took me to task for making any reference to Obama's
race.
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I thought of
(Obama) as a person. I did not see black or white or Hispanic or that he was a
man -- I saw a person! If people really, truly want racial equality, then the
first step has to be to STOP looking at skin color," wrote one reader.
"When I look
at a person, the last thing I think about is skin color or heritage,"
wrote another.
Sorry, but I'm not
buying it. While I am sympathetic to any desire to get past dated and useless
habits of mind -- especially the contentious politics of the color line --
that's just nonsense. None of us, black, white or brown, is colorblind.
Those readers may
think they don't notice skin color, but it's just not so, says
That's not a condemnation,
not a presumption of malicious bigotry. It's just an acknowledgment of the
peculiar burdens of humanity, especially in these
Each of us is stuck
with prejudices, and I'm using the denotative meaning here -- "an
unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought
or reason," according to Webster's. But we don't have to be governed by them.
Cutting-edge work
by Greenwald and his colleagues, who include
But the first step
-- as in any self-help project -- is to own up to the problem. Many people
don't realize they're prejudiced because, well, they really don't realize
they're prejudiced. That self-knowledge is not necessarily difficult to
acquire, but it's quite often difficult to accept.
Racial bigotry is a
social taboo in this country, so much so that only an extremist fringe --
assorted neo-Nazis and skinheads -- admit their rank prejudices. That may
explain why some volunteers who have taken Greenwald's Implicit Association
Test, which uses word association to detect unconscious biases, are furious
when the test shows they hold hidden negative views of black Americans.
"Some people
have a concept of themselves as non-prejudiced, so anything indicating a chink
in that armor is threatening," Greenwald said. But his research has also
pointed out that most people simply aren't aware of their implicit assumptions.
Take the current
Democratic primary, with its history-making narrative. Greenwald and colleagues
modified the Implicit Association Test (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit) to search for unconscious
biases among Democratic voters. When asked who they planned to cast ballots
for, a sample of voters reported strong support for Obama, who held a 42
percent-to-34 percent lead over Hillary Clinton
among the sample, with John Edwards coming in at
12. But when the same people took the Implicit Association Test, measuring
their unconscious preferences,
And here's one
finding that upends conventional wisdom: According to the test, black voters,
too, held implicit biases that worked against Obama. But how could it be
otherwise? Black Americans are products of the same culture as white Americans,
with its myriad stereotypes of black incompetence. And black Americans have
internalized many of the same stereotypes.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a day when
his children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the
content of their character." But that day has not yet arrived. We might
hasten its dawning if we'd admit that what we see is not necessarily what we
believe.
Oops! In a column
about rigid voter ID laws, I mistakenly referred to the Bill
of Rights in underscoring the right to vote. I knew better. The right to
vote is explicit in the 15th, 19th and 26th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Opinion Cynthia Tucker
OBAMA'S CANDIDACY IS EVIDENCE OF
RACIAL TRANSFORMATION
Fri
Jan 4, 7:56 PM ET
In a thoughtful Atlantic Monthly essay touting Barack
Obama last month, political commentator Andrew Sullivan revealed his
disappointment with a speech the
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But as Sullivan noted, that was part of its appeal. "It was only
after I left the hotel that it occurred to me that I'd just been bored on tax
policy by a national black leader. That I should have been struck by this was
born in my own racial stereotypes, of course. But it won me over," he
wrote.
What? No rhythm or
rhyme?
Obama's insistence
on defying stereotypes has been at the core of his popularity. He is bright,
sometimes boring, often engaging, thoughtful, occasionally cranky, visionary,
usually well-informed, sometimes slightly self-righteous. Oh, yeah. And black.
Always. In other words, he is a presidential candidate who happens to be black
-- not a black presidential candidate. For those of us eager for
In another 30 days
or so, it will be clear whether Obama's campaign is a mere moment of wonder and
curiosity or a genuine political movement. His most daunting test will come on
Feb. 5, a Tsunami Tuesday of multistate primaries and caucuses. If he loses
most of those critical contests, his presidential campaign will likely be too
wounded to limp forward.
He wouldn't be a
failure, by any means. He'd have done his part to further the
"post-racial" realignment of American politics, along with such
distinguished officials as Massachusetts Gov. Deval
Patrick, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and even former
But Obama will be
in the game for
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.
Indeed, in sizing
up the presidential aspirants, some black Americans have themselves resorted to
racially charged assessments. Last fall, in a rambling and nonsensical
endorsement of Sen. Hillary Clinton, civil rights
legend Andrew Young -- who, believe it or not, was once a diplomat -- declared:
"Hillary has Bill behind her, and Bill is every bit as black as Barack.
He's probably gone with more black women than Barack." Oh, my goodness.
Since Obama
announced his intention to seek the presidency, he has been dogged by a
persistent undercurrent that suggests he is somehow not quite "black
enough" -- a thread eagerly pursued by mainstream reporters and analysts.
At the very least, an Obama surge should get us past that foolishness.
For their part,
white voters contend they are willing to consider a "qualified" black
candidate for president. According to
Whatever happens,
this has been a transformational moment in American politics. Obama has already
achieved something that would have seemed impossible just a few decades ago.
Obama calls for unity to heal
divisions
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 56 minutes ago
Barack Obama's Presidential
campaign
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Heading into the most racially diverse
contest yet in the presidential campaign, Obama took to the pulpit at Martin Luther King Jr.'s
"The divisions, the stereotypes, the
scapegoating, the ease with which we blame the plight of ourselves on others,
all of that distracts us from the common challenges we face: war and poverty;
inequality and injustice," Obama said. "We can no longer afford to
build ourselves up by tearing each other down. We can no longer afford to
traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our
politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late."
Obama has called for a new kind of politics
that he says should appeal to people's hopes, not their fears.
He is counting on blacks to stick with him despite
losing to Hillary Rodham Clinton in two
consecutive contests. He lost
Obama's campaign has worked to overcome a
concern among black voters that he wouldn't be able to win an election in white
"I understand that many of you are
still a little skeptical," Obama said Friday night at a King banquet in
He said in a radio interview Sunday that
winning South Carolina was critical, and that immigration, education and the
economy would be important issues in that contest.
"We think we're moving in the right
direction, but we've got a lot of work to do," Obama said in the interview
with the Rev. Jesse Jackson on WVON-AM in
At Ebenezer, where King launched the civil rights movement, Obama spoke in front of a
tightly packed crowd; hundreds more who had lined up outside in subfreezing
temperatures couldn't get in. It was unclear whether the crowd was for Obama,
the King Holiday or caused by the unusual blast of ice and snow that closed
other area churches.
"We had to fight, bleed and die just
to be able to vote," the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock said in introducing
Obama. "Now we can select presidents, and now with credibility and
intelligence and power, we can run for president."
He teased worshippers who cheered at the
sight of the most viable black presidential candidate in history. "I
understand, but don't get it twisted," Warnock said.
Obama said blacks often have been the
victims of injustice, but he said they also have perpetrated divisions with
gays, Jews and immigrants.
"If we're honest with ourselves, we'll
acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of
a beloved community," he said to applause.
Obama suggested he's allowed divisions to
creep into his campaign in recent days. "Last week, it crept into the
campaign for president, with charges and countercharges that served to obscure
the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.
None of our hands are clean," he said.
Obama's and Hillary
Rodham Clinton's campaigns engaged in several days of back and forth
after Clinton's comments about King that some interpreted as minimizing his
role in the passage of landmark civil rights legislation.
The two candidates called a truce on that issue last week.