Philadelphia Tribune - Index

Philadelphia Tribune - Sunday, August 03 2008 - Index

Sunday, August 3, 2008 Page 5-A
Obama ‘race card’ is the color of his skin
As John McCain’s camp
dives more deeply into the Karl
Rove playbook, his campaign
has unleashed a number of
harshly negative attacks
against Barack Obama – some
sophomoric, some offensive,
some outright lies. But among
the more curious was the claim
last week that Obama has
“played the race card, and he
played it from the bottom of the
deck.”
“It’s divisive, negative,
shameful and wrong,” huffed
Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign
manager.
What had Obama done? Had
he called McCain a racist? Had
he demanded reparations for
lavery? Had he pointed out
he Republican Party’s failure
o attract large numbers of
lack and Latino voters?
Nope. Obama had just stated
the painfully obvious. Chiding
McCain for his below-the-belt
attacks, Obama told a Missouri
audience that his opponent
would try to make him seem
too risky a choice, too big a
change.
“So nobody really thinks that
Bush and McCain have a real
answer for the challenges we
face. So what they’re going to
try to do is make you scared of
me,” he said.
Continuing with a parody of
McCain’s attacks, Obama said,
“You know, he’s (Obama) not
patriotic enough. He’s got a
funny name. You know, he
doesn’t look like all those other
presidents on the dollar bills.
He’s risky. That’s essentially
the argument they’re making.”
What’s wrong with that?
Forgive me for pointing this out
to the historically challenged,
but that is verifiably true.
Obama, born to a father from
Kenya and a mother from
Kansas, doesn’t look like
George Washington or Ben
Franklin or Abraham Lincoln.
Indeed, race (Obama’s, that is)
is a central fact of this campaign,
and it’s absurd to pretend
otherwise.
If Obama were to be elected,
he’d become the first Black
president in this nation’s history,
a mere half-century after
Black Americans were beaten
and bombed and fire-hosed for
attempting to secure the franchise
or sit in the front of the
bus. While the country has
made enormous, perhaps
miraculous, racial progress
over those intervening years –
enough that a Black man can
be considered a true contender
for the presidency – it would be
foolish to pretend that racial
considerations have disap-
peared from American public
life. (Nor have considerations of
religion or gender disappeared,
for that matter.)
I know, I know. Some of you
are furious that I’ve brought
this up. I’ll be inundated with
e-mails and letters from some
of you denouncing me for
“playing the race card.” You’ll
insist race and its implications
are all I ever discuss. Not true,
not even close. (I know because
I’ve counted.) Some of you will
claim that racism remains alive
and well because I and my fellow
race-card-playing pundits
won’t let it go.
Somehow, I doubt it’s as
simple a matter as that. Many
psychologists believe that
recognition of “the other” –
those with obvious differences
in skin color or hair texture or
language – is deeply embedded
in human beings, a primal
instinct. Most of us take race
and gender and other superficial
distinctions into account
subconsciously, without being
aware of it. That doesn’t make
us racist. It merely makes us
human.
Is McCain playing the race
card? He doesn’t have to.
Instead, he’s trying to take
advantage of Obama’s “otherness”
by portraying him as
somehow un-American –
tropes that ride on the shoulders
of assumptions derived
from Obama’s status as a
racial minority.
(As for charges that Obama
lacks the common touch, a
newspaper executive I know
recently noted that “we’ve
made progress when the worst
thing you can say about a
Black man is that he’s elitist.”
He had a point.)
Obama’s race does not doom
his candidacy, of course. Some
analysts have argued, persuasively,
that his biography helps
him significantly in some quarters.
Certainly, his message of
“change” is aided by his relative
youth, his freshness on the
American scene and the historical
significance of his candidacy.
On the other hand, those
very factors will undoubtedly
turn off certain segments of
voters.
But whether Obama’s race
helps him, hurts him or ends
up a wash in a close election,
it’s a factor in this presidential
season. He doesn’t look like
those other guys on the currency.
(Neither would Hillary
Clinton have looked like them.)
Let’s acknowledge that and
move on to the mortgage crisis
and oil prices.
Look out, cycling tour, here come the Africans
Here’s a question for you ...
What do Rahsaan Bahati,
Zakayo Nderi and “Major”
Taylor have in common?
I’ll get right to the answer to
that question in a minute, but,
first, I have to explain that for
the past few weeks, I’ve been
trapped, like many other casual
sports fans, in that limbo
that exists each year between
the end of basketball season
and the start of football season.
I know, I know ... there still
is a thing called Major League
Baseball that conducts games
during this “slow” period, but
since that sport shifted its
emphasis away from developing
and recruiting young
African-American star players
several years ago, and since its
leaders tried to blame the
entirety of their game’s rampant
steroid abuse on one
Black man named Barry
Bonds, I find it hard to watch
baseball, anymore, real hard.
All of that is “backdrop” to
why I wound up spending so
much of my free time over the
past three weeks watching the
Tour de France.
Yeah, that’s right, the Tour
de France.
It wasn’t a complete coincidence.
About a year ago, I
actually started cycling, again
– not to enter “the Tour” or
anything like it – just for exercise
and relaxation. It’s a
good thing.
For the promoters of the
Tour de France, however,
cycling is so much more than
just a “good thing,” exercise
or relaxation.
In fact, they unabashedly
refer to their race as the
World’s Largest Sporting
Event, and they certainly have
a strong argument. Two billion
people worldwide follow
the event each year on television,
in 170 countries. In
addition, 12 million spectators
come out to watch the race
Sometime this month we will
know whom the Republicans
and Democrats will nominate
as their respective vice presidential
candidates.
Obviously, there is a
50/50 chance that it will be
either a Republican or
Democrat as Sens. John
McCain and Barak Obama
have said they will make
their choices public sometime
before their conventions
and most likely even before
the Summer Olympics.
If that’s the case, their decisions
could me made as early
as this week.
On the Democratic side,
here’s a lot of talk about Sen.
along the 2,200-mile course.
This year’s race began in a
city named Brest in western
France, and finished some
2,175 miles and 23 days later
in Paris.
After watching this year’s
Tour de France, however, I
was left with this conclusion:
Cycling is not that much different
from pre-Black baseball,
pre-Black basketball, or pre-
Black football. They were all
missing something that wound
up making them better – the
participation by athletes of
African descent.
The ugly truth is that since
the Tour de France began in
1903, only three African
cyclists have ever participated,
and all of that happened just
this year, in 2008, and each
one of those cyclists was
white – two from South Africa
and one from Kenya. So my
take-away from the Tour de
France is this: interesting
sport, 20 teams, 180 cyclists,
no Black people.
Indeed, there were no Black
cyclists on either of the two
U.S.-sponsored Tour de
France teams (Columbia and
Garmin-Chipotle), this year.
Even more curious, there were
no Black cyclists on
Barloworld, the South African
team.
Does this mean that Black
folks don’t know how to ride
bicycles? It certainly does
not. It simply means that,
over the past 105 years, no
“Tour” team has thought there
has ever been a Black person
anywhere on Earth who might
have contributed to the overall
Joe Biden, a seasoned foreign
policy expert, Gov. Kathleen
Sibelius of Kansas, a woman
who can help heal the wounds
of not having Hillary Clinton on
the ticket, and Gov. Tim Kaine
of Virginia can address the
Southern white male issue,
which is an area where Obama
is underperforming.
On the Republican side, all
the talk is about the need to
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
speaks at the National Urban League Conference in Orlando,
Fla., Friday. — AP PHOTO/JOHN RAOUX
success of their team and its
pursuit of the coveted firstplace
team finish.
Sounds like pre-Jackie
Robinson Major League
Baseball (prior to 1947), pre-
Woody Strode National
Football League (prior to 1946)
and pre-Earl Lloyd/Chuck
Cooper/”Sweetwater” Clifton
National Basketball
Association (prior to 1950).
Of course, these players
weren’t the first Blacks who
were “qualified” or “good
enough,” they were just the
first Blacks to be given the
opportunity.
Sounds a lot like what happens
today with opportunities
in the construction industry,
in Corporate America, in higher
education, and in politics,
right here in the good old USA.
But here’s where the name
“Major” Taylor comes in.
Taylor proved, back in 1899
when he won the world’s onemile
track cycling championship,
that Blacks folks
absolutely did know how to
ride a bicycle.
In fact, when “Major”
entered his first professional
bike race in 1896, at Madison
Square Garden, he lapped the
entire field during the halfmile
race.
His great talent didn’t stop
him from being banned from
bicycle racing in his home
state of Indiana, simply
because he won too frequently,
there.
It didn’t stop a competing
cyclist in Massachusetts from
tackling him on the track, in a
jealous rage, and choking him
into unconsciousness.
Taylor has been embraced in
America only following his
death in 1932, and his name is
little known outside of the circle
of cycling historians and
members of the chapters of the
Major Taylor Association
across the country.
boost the party’s chances by
offering the No. 2 slot to a
younger, more energetic person
such as Sen. John Thune, from
South Dakota, former governor
Mitt Romney of Massachusetts
or Gov. Bobby Jindal, a young
governor of Eastern Indian
descent.
I have a sneaky suspicion
that Obama and McCain have
already made their minds up as
to whom they will choose this
month. Before they make their
announcements, I have some a
suggestion for both of them:
Pick a well respected American
who has impeccable foreign
policy credentials, rises above
party politics, and who just
Kenyan cyclists Zakayo Nderi, left, and Samwell Mwangi are
two up-and-coming competitors working toward participating
in the Tour de France. – PHOTO SUBMITTED
Following in “Major” Taylor’s
legacy in the separate specialty
of road racing (the type of
cycling practiced at “the Tour”
and in Criterium events, such
as Philadelphia’s own
Commerce Bank Pro-Cycling
Race) is 26-year old Rahsaan
Bahati, from Los Angeles.
Bahati is generally recognized
as one of cycling’s
brightest and fastest stars
and, with a continuing focus
on the endurance training
demanded by the major “Tour”
events, could be the first Black
Tour de France winner,
assuming one of the 20-22
teams would make a place for
him on its roster. All Bahati
does is win. It would seem
that at least one “Tour” team
should be interested in that.
Finally, there is a Black
Kenyan cyclist, Zakayo Nderi,
happens to be Black.
Who is this man? Former
secretary of state and retired
general Colin Powell. Powell is
someone most Americans have
come to admire and respect
over the years.
He is a seasoned diplomat
who can navigate the murky
waters of international diplomacy,
and is a rational thinker
who can help us withdraw from
Iraq with honor and dignity, not
in defeat or despair.
While a moderate
Republican, Powell is someone
who instantly comes to mind
when we think of bipartisanship.
Obama could pick Powell and
who may well represent the
first in a whole new generation
of East Africans who have the
potential to rewrite virtually
every road racing record currently
in existence.
Nderi and his fellow-Kenyan
cyclist Samwell Mwangi have
been supported by a
Singaporean named Nick
Leong in an effort to prove that
East Africans, the world’s
greatest endurance athletes,
are able to transfer their
prowess in distance in
marathon events to endurance
cycling events.
In fact, Leong, Nderi and
Mwangi are on their way to
France, as you read this, to
have the Kenyan cyclists test
their hill-climbing speed at
Alpe d’Huez, the most difficult
mountain stage of the Tour de
France.
would instantly receive the foreign
policy credentials that he
desperately needs. McCain
could pick Powell and receive
more interest from Blacks,
Hispanics and even some
whites who intuitively want an
ethnic president, but are still
unsure about the junior senator
from Illinois because of his
thin resume and lack of executive
experience.
Rank-and-file Republicans
will get all upset because he is
a moderate. Gasp. Rank-andfile
Democrats will turn red
because he’s a Republican.
Gasp. I say, our country’s reputation
is much more important.
So there you go. Gasp.
From Aug. 8-15, they will be
comparing their times up that
murderous ascent to times
that great Tour de France riders,
such as Lance Armstrong,
have produced.
If Nderi’s times are competitive
or beat the standard set by
most Tour riders, it will constitute
clear evidence that
East Africans should be competing
in the “Tour.”
The logic behind this effort
is pretty clear. Marathon racing,
a very comparable
endurance sport to Tour bike
racing, had no African participation
until the late 1980s.
Prior to that, it was commonly
held that Black Africans and
African Americans could only
excel in sprinting events.
It was further believed that
endurance races required a
kind of strategy, intelligence
and knowledge of the sport of
running that Blacks naturally
did not possess. But now we
all know what a “crock” that
was. The Africans have
absolutely dominated distance
running since being given the
opportunity. They certainly
have “raised the bar” for athletes
from every other part of
the world in that discipline.
In fact, according to information
provided by Leong,
African runners have gone
from winning just one of 25
major marathons in the fiveyear
period ending in 1985, in
London, Berlin, Boston,
Chicago and New York, to winning
24 out of the 25
marathons contested in those
same cities over the five-year
period ending in 2005.
It looks as though the next
“Jackie Robinson” in a major
sport may very well be named
Zakayo Nderi or Rahsaam
Bahati.
Somewhere “Major” Taylor is
looking down on all of this
with a “serious” smile on his
face.
A vice presidential pick suitable for either side
Whoever picks Powell would
also guarantee diversity in our
executive branch and could
possibly alter electoral politics
for generations to come.
Obama speaks in platitudes
and inspires all Americans
through his message for
change. McCain speaks about
honor and service and inspires
all Americans through his service
to our country.
Let’s give both candidates a
round of applause for their
vision for America, but let’s also
make sure we have diversity all
the way to the White House.
Gen. Colin Powell would
guarantee that.