Is there so little sympathy to the victims that their death while tragic, is best forgetten, lest someone somewhere (lots of people, lots of where?) use it to justify racist speech, action or policies?

This identity politics makes the coverage of issues that intersect with race so challenging for the mainstream liberal media. Lots of murders in Philadelphia … publicize it too much and you’re playing to a stereotype, too little, and you’re ignoring the problem … not enough Charles Meyers’ out there to cover the problem in a identity-positive way.

I think if you go back to late last year, or January of this year, you’ll see what it was like when Obama was commonly framed as having transcended race, a figure more like Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan. As long as that frame held, I think it’s entirely possible that there are votes that he could get which will switch the other way if there’s a successful attempt to tag him as a black recipient of affirmative action. Which is what I think the Clinton campaign is counting on, and what I think is so reprehensible about what they’re doing.

As far as how to disseminate such remarks, unfortunately, you could argue that my blog post (and thousands like it) are precisely how you disseminate such remarks, and moreover, that the Clinton campaign knows it. This is precisely how you do dirty tricks and dogwhistling. You say something in an obscure place (and by the way, the Daily Breeze article was a reporter writing down something that Ferraro had said in several interviews and radio appearances prior to the article appearing), wait for someone to pick up on it, and then it disseminates via many people being outraged. Voila! Your hands are clean.

If that’s right, by the way, it was never intended for voters in Mississippi, which was a lost cause. It was aimed squarely at Pennsylvania.

When the subject turned to Obama, Clinton’s rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Ferraro’s comments took on a decidedly bitter edge.

“I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama’s campaign – to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against,” she said. “For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It’s been a very sexist media. Some just don’t like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” she continued. “And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” Ferraro does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.

“I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he’s going to be able to put an end to partisanship,” Ferraro said, clearly annoyed. “Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship – that’s the way our country is.”

It does not seem to me that Ferrarro is saying that any black man running would have done as well as Obama, but rather that for Obama, in this particular Democratic primary, Obama’s race is a net plus. And I think she is probably right. If he were a less attractive candidate it wouldn’t be.

To say that Ferrarro is implying that Obama is leading the race for the Democratic nomination because of “affirmative action” is ludicrous.

Ferrarro made her statement in a telephone interview with a regional California newspaper. That doesn’t seem to me a very good way to send a racist signal to Mississippi or Pennsylvania voters. Bringing the comment to the attention of the national press and calling it racist before the Mississippi primary (athough I suspect it was intended to help in Pennsaylvania) does seem to me a way to use it for political advantage.

I am pleased that Obama in his comment said that he didn’t think comment was racist, just devisive. I think he means that. But it was his campaign that highlighted it so that it could be viewed as devisive. It’s a political campaign and using Ferrarro’s comments is not unfair – calling the comments or Ferrarro herself racist is.

Statement 1:
“Joe is a terrible manager. He’s nasty to his subordinates, he’s never prepared for meetings, and he takes credit for the work of others. The only reason he rose so high was because of affirmative action.”

Statement 2:
“Joe seems like a great manager, but you know how affirmative action works around here. All those unqualified people get promoted so we can hit our diversity targets.”

Both are saying that “Joe” only got where he is today because of his skin color. But while the first starts with the contention that Joe, as an individual, is unqualified for his position and attempts to explain how he nevertheless got there, the second suggests that Joe, by virtue of his skin color, deserves extra scrutiny because people who are like him are frequently unqualified for their positions, and insinuates that therefore Joe himself is also unqualified.

I’m dubious about both conversations, simply because I don’t believe the effects of affirmative action are particularly strong or pervasive within our society, especially as compared to those of racial prejudice, but I would be inclined to give the first speaker the benefit of the doubt, especially if her critique of Joe seems well-founded in reality.

The second statement, however, is absolutely racist. Absent any substantive critiques of Joe as an individual, it instead attempts to smear Joe by invoking negative stereotypes about “those sort of people.” Moreover, it sets an almost impossible bar for a member of a minority to to clear. How to you show that you’re qualified if both your past achievements and current reputation are suspect?

If you’re still dubious, consider substituting “the good old boy’s network” for affirmative action in the two statements. The first one still feels plausible – I could well imagine it coming up in a conversation. I can’t imagine someone making the second statement, though. People just don’t go through life with that level of suspicion regarding their impressions of others, except towards specific groups they find suspect.

Now, I can’t find a full transcript of Ferraro’s statements online, so perhaps it was prefaced by a strong, well-reasoned critique of Obama’s qualifications to be president, and she is simply trying to explain how someone so manifestly unqualified came so far. This seems unlikely. And certainly her widely-quoted statement strikes me as much more similar to the second statement above than the first – a suggestion that he needs to be held to an even higher level of scrutiny because he is a black man, with a smarmy insinuation that there simply are no qualified black men out there. Racist.