Black Men Can Wait

Just one year ago, pundits like myself were speculating about how in the world Republicans would be able to cope with the racial subtexts that haunt them every presidential election cycle — that awkwardness of appealing to minority voters and visiting NAACP candidate forums, the mass exodus of Latinos from the party due to failed immigration policies; the list went on … Yet here we stand, not ruminating about McCain being “too white” for this color-wheel country, but wondering instead if Barack can get past the argument that black preachers in black churches say the darnedest things.

I have to believe that the Obama campaign longs for the days where they could play the race card on their opponents, or, better still, rise above the veiled innuendo and make Bill Clinton look foolish in the process. But those days are gone, and identity politics are back in full effect.

The sad irony here is that Barack Obama is not the biggest perpetrator of this phenomenon. Rather, it’s Sen. Clinton who peddles this issue the hardest, for she stands to gain the most from its success. While hers is a brand of identity politics far more subtle, you hear it in her speeches out on the hustings — the talk of how, for too long, a woman’s place was in the kitchen. For too long, the identity politics of the 20th century dictated that sisters should bide their time; and the Oval Office was a room they could only hope to clean, never govern from. “Those days are over,” she says triumphantly.

But are they? What about the same opportunities for the political advancement of the black man? Does he not count this election cycle? Should he not count? You see, to agree with the Hillary camp, to accept her premise that this is the Year of the Woman, you must acknowledge the converse of that argument: Black men can wait.

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