WP, Eugene Robinson: Who's Raising Race? The Messages Loaded Into a McCain Surrogate's Words

[DeepModem Mom]

Who's Raising Race?
The Messages Loaded Into a McCain Surrogate's Words
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, August 5, 2008; Page A19

....On Sunday, the exceedingly thin-skinned (Senator Lindsey) Graham was still shocked, saddened and outraged over Obama's throwaway line, spoken days earlier, about not looking like previous presidents. Graham said on "Fox News Sunday" that "there's no doubt in my mind that what Senator Obama is trying to suggest -- that he's a victim of something." Graham later added: "We're not going to run a campaign like he did in the primary. Every time somebody brings up a challenge to who you are and what you believe, 'You're a racist.' That's not going to happen in this campaign."

The key words are "victim" and "racist" -- which Obama did not say. Graham puts them in Obama's mouth because of their power to alienate.

With the first loaded word, Graham is trying to tie Obama to a stereotype: the Great African American Victim. He's playing to the annoyance some whites feel at being reminded of racial sins committed long before they were born or even long before their families came to this country. As Graham well knows, Obama has taken great pains to sanitize his campaign of even the faintest whiff of victimhood. Obama understands that in order to be elected president, he has to come off as the least-aggrieved black man in America.
Most of his supporters understand this, too. They know that he can't react with anger when his love of country is questioned over a flag pin. They see that he can't be seen to take offense when his self-confidence -- a quality shared by every U.S. senator I've ever met -- is portrayed as arrogance, as if he had somehow reached beyond his station by thinking he is worthy of being elected president....

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This battle over Obama's image as a black man is arguably the central front of the presidential campaign right now. Once-sharp lines between the candidates on issues such as withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq or allowing new offshore oil drilling are becoming blurred. The Democratic Party's structural advantages going into the election are formidable. It's hard to imagine how McCain could possibly win unless he generates doubt in voters' minds about Obama. One way to do that would be to fabricate the impression that Obama is demanding special treatment and privilege because he is black -- in other words, turn a self-made man into a stereotypical beneficiary of affirmative action.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/04/AR2008080401824.html?hpid=opinionsbox1