America's Original Sin

“Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere” – C.S. Lewis, British scholar and novelist 1898-1963

It has been referred to as America’s original sin, slavery. Almost one hundred and fifty years after the great legislative leader of black emancipation, Abraham Lincoln, enacted the first laws of Reconstruction, and forty years after the assassination of Dr. King, America once again finds itself embroiled in a ferocious debate about race. The brutal legacy of slavery and segregation is embedded in the psyche of most Americans. While white Americans don’t believe that they should be punished for the sins of their forefathers, many feel stained with the sins of their remote ancestors. In this election cycle, the issue of race in American society is front and center in a way never before seen in American politics.

The candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, (who as I write, has an 85% statistical chance, according to all of the leading commentators, think tanks and political cognoscenti, of becoming the first African American to be his party’s nominee for President), has forced Americans to confront in a very real way their deepest feelings about race and racial inequality. The good news is that in a recent study, 76% of Americans say the country is ready for a black President. However, as I travel across the United States, it is clear to me that the impact of two hundred years of injustice is still being felt in African American communities everywhere, resulting in illiteracy, poverty, crime and drug addiction.

The candidacy of Barack Obama has presented Americans of all colors and creeds an opportunity to confront head on their own feelings and beliefs in relation to racial inequality and injustice. Recent events have underlined the sensitivity of the race issue on the campaign trail. Back in February, after Obama had beaten Hillary Clinton by 25 points in the South Carolina primary, former President Bill Clinton dismissed the defeat by saying that Rev Jesse Jackson had also won South Carolina during his runs for the nomination in 1984 and 1988. The characterization by Bill Clinton was that Obama’s huge win was only made possible by the large African American population in South Carolina and that Obama wouldn’t be able to capture other states where there was an overwhelmingly large white population. Clinton’s comments angered many in the black community, not least because Obama then went on to sweep primary after primary where the white vote far exceeded the black vote. Racial stereotyping has become a hallmark of the Clinton campaign since.

The inflammatory comments made by Obama’s former pastor, Rev Jeremiah Wright, have also been the center of much debate and controversy. Wright, a pastor, theological scholar and champion of the poor and underprivileged in Chicago for a generation, was castigated for a few comments he made over the course of the last 30 years, where from the pulpit he condemned many within the white community for their racial bigotry and criticized successive American governments by saying that events like 9/11 were a direct result of 50 years of American imperialism and hegemony. The CIA by the way has an official term for it, “blowback”.

While Obama has repeatedly condemned the comments the issue continues to be part of the ongoing Clinton “kitchen sink strategy” of doing and saying anything to try and somehow wrestle the nomination from Obama. Likewise, recent comments by Clinton surrogate (and former Vice Presidential nominee) Geraldine Ferraro and an ongoing campaign by Rupert Murdoch owned Fox News (in my opinion more accurately referred to by one American journalist as “Fox Noise” or “Fixed News”) to continually play the race card in its supposedly (and self titled) “fair and balanced” coverage of the Obama campaign.

Obama has tapped into a movement for change, a movement that is leaving aside the slash and burn politics of the past and in the process he is bringing voters of every race, color, age and religion along with him. I recently had dinner with some business colleagues. One of our group was a 55 year African American man. Our conversation came around to politics. Like many African Americans, he told us of his admiration for Bill Clinton and the personal warmth that black people across the country have for the former president. In any other election year, Hillary Clinton would have gotten his vote, however he is going to cast his vote for Obama because he believes that Obama understands the journey that black Americans have had to travel to get where they are today. White people never will understand that journey.

As I write, the Pennsylvania primary is 5 days away. The consensus is that Hillary Clinton will win the state, but anything less than a blowout of 15-20 points won’t enable her to make any serious inroads into Obama’s delegate lead. Primaries follow in Indiana and North Carolina in early May, where Obama is leading in the polls. The fear that many Democrats have is that the long, drawn out nomination fight between Clinton and Obama will give John McCain lots of free time to gain momentum in advance of the November election. Hopefully, the Democratic nomination process can be concluded sooner rather than later.

As of April 17th, the latest delegate numbers are as follows:

Obama/Clinton:
Pledged delegates: 1416/1252
Super-delegates: 235/257
Total delegates: 1651/1509
States Won: 30/14