A Matter of Color

The presidential election season occasioned many “inquiries” from the media into the “role” that race was playing.

Of course, when media figures would repeatedly speak of “the role of race,” they were invariably referring to its role for whites. In truth, they were concerned that “white racism” would impede Obama’s success. That over 95 percent of blacks were planning on voting for the Democratic candidate, if it was treated at all, was regarded as incidental.

Would whites vote against Obama solely because of his color? This was the only race-related question with which the media was concerned. But the question was in large measure rhetorical, for it was framed so as to assert that whites would indeed make color their sole reason for rejecting their candidate.

In all fairness, however, there are plenty of “centrist” and “center-right” whites who spoke as if it were a foregone conclusion that blacks were voting for Obama solely because of his color.

While this may shock the sensibilities of all who were nursed on the breasts of our culture’s conventional wisdom, no one voted either for or against Obama solely on the basis of race, for it is impossible to make any decisions solely on the basis of skin color.

Race or color could never function as the exclusive criterion in decision-making because no one ever perceives only “race” or “color.” “Blackness” and/or “Whiteness” are what philosophers have traditionally referred to as “universals.” There has been much debate throughout the centuries over whether universals are real. Yet regardless of any given philosopher’s position on this issue, all agree that our sense organs perceive only “particulars”: it isn’t Blackness and Whiteness as such that we see, but this black book and that white pillow.

Similarly, people see only black and white people. For example, according to the very same polls that showed nearly one-third of white Democrats refusing to vote for Obama only “because he is black,” those same whites admitted to associating blacks with “violence,” “laziness,” and “complaining.”

But these white voters never suggested or meant to suggest that they believed these activities were unique to blacks; nor did they imply or intend to imply that most, much less all, blacks were violent, lazy, and especially given to complaining. Rather, based on their everyday experience with black people in contemporary American life, they have concluded that blacks are “over-represented” among those who engage in these ugly human phenomena.

And this is something that no one of any race or political orientation denies.

Charges of “structural” or “institutional racism” are always buttressed by appeals to statistics showing blacks to be at a significant “disadvantage” vis-à-vis whites with respect to rates of illegitimacy, crime, education, incarceration, and other social indicia. That is, there would be no accusations of pervasive “white racism” lest it was common knowledge that blacks are indeed more likely than whites to engage in socially corrosive conduct.

Obama’s race or color certainly played a role in this race, as did McCain’s. But, again, it could have played only a role, for race or color is always inseparable from non-racial characteristics with which experience has linked it.

That what I am saying is correct, you need only consider the following thought experiment.

Imagine that it was not Barack Obama, but, say, Clarence Thomas, or at least a Clarence Thomas-like figure, that had been running for the presidency. Due to the fact that Thomas is all black, not half-black, like Obama, he is several shades darker than the latter, but does anyone seriously think that the media would have been sweating over whether whites would refuse to vote for him “just because he is black?” Don’t you think that these pundits know that these very same “racist” whites would much more likely than not support Thomas, even if his opponent was white?

Furthermore, do you really think that the vast majority of black voters, to say nothing of the Louis Farrakhans, Jesse Jacksons, and Al Sharptons of the world, would have backed Thomas at all, let alone with a fraction of the enthusiasm with which they backed Obama?

No, nothing is ever solely a matter of color.