When the well-known US feminist Gloria Steinem was asked whether she would prefer a woman or a black president, her answer was simply ‘yes’. At the start of the campaign to elect the Democratic candidate for President of the United States, I too thought ‘Why not?’ –either a woman or a black presidential candidate would mark a break with tradition, and signify change and hope.
But I have since changed my mind. Yes, I know I don’t have the right to vote in the US elections, but if I did, I have no doubt that my candidate of choice would be Barack Obama.
Let me first say why I cannot possibly consider Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. As the campaign goes on, the more obvious it becomes to me that while the Clintons appear to have a plan (to rule the White House – first he, then she – for the maximum sixteen years) and all means seem kosher to achieve this dynastic aim, Obama has a dream. Hillary Clinton might be the more seasoned of the two, but then her husband Bill was certainly as inexperienced as both John F Kennedy was and Obama is. So experience is not really an issue.
So what is the issue? For me, there are two central points. The first has to do with the war in Iraq. In October 2002, Senator Obama was already clear about his objection to the war, saying: “I don’t oppose all wars… What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by… weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
“What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals … That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.” It’s as clear a statement of dissention as anyone could make. In contrast, Clinton did vote for the war.
The second and equally crucial issue is race. Yes, I have heard the criticism that Obama does not talk about racial equality, but Obama is racial equality.
As commentator Peter Levine says: “Not that everyone is willing to vote for a black man, because most people won’t vote at all, and many will vote for other candidates … Not that we have achieved racial justice, because race will still be a major determinant of the quality of schools, public safety, health care, and employment opportunities that one receives… [and] not that the Obama voters have left racism behind, because they might not vote for a black candidate who has a stereotypically black accent or a working-class culture.”
Supporting Obama means voting against the notion of dynastic presidential rule by Houses of Bush and Clinton, voting against the war in Iraq, and voting for racial equality. I am not deluding myself that any US President will be anything but the ruler of the American empire with all that this implies, but as Levine says, voting Obama “may mean that a governing coalition of Americans have shed racism sufficiently that they can overcome their reflex negative responses to dark skin – and that would be something.”
Dr Ronit Lentin is head of the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies at the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. Her column appears fortnightly in Metro Eireann
