Barack Obama will now be permanently in the history books as the first black to be chosen as a presidential candidate by a major party. Congratulations.
Yes, it’s a milestone.
I’ll be excited when it isn’t. I don’t think that trumpeting “the first black” this and “the first woman” that and the “first blond pygmy lesbian” whatever does much good. In fact, I think it’s usually harmful in the long run. The perception that blacks, women, or whoever are being favored or held up for special recognition for the sake of their “disadvantaged” status leads to a general denigration of the accomplishments of anybody in the “favored” group.
When the first woman graduated #1 in her class academically at West Point (Beat Army! Sorry, ingrained habit. 😉 ), the media swarmed in. Inevitably, someone asked what she thought of being the one to reach this historic milestone. “It will be an accomplishment when a woman graduates first in her class at West Point and nobody notices,” she replied. Sure, she graduated first in her class. But the year before, some guy worked just as hard to be first in his class and the media couldn’t’ve cared less.
As I was gathering my coat and papers at the Senator’s office after my interview for my Academy appointment, some staffer followed me into the coat room and sneered, “You’re only still in the running because you’re a girl. If you were a guy, your eyesight would’ve disqualified you long ago.”
“I’m still in the running because I have fabulous SAT’s, better than a 4.0 GPA, and I’m in a ton of extracurriculars and in leadership positions in half of them,” I snapped back. But his perception was that I didn’t deserve to be there, because I’d “obviously” gotten special treatment to fill a “girl quota.”
At the Academy, there was a wide-spread perception that the Brigade Commander spot (the top midshipman in the hierarchy) was rotated among certain groups. So, when a black became Brigade Commander, people muttered that it was because of his race, even though he was probably the best BC we had the whole time I was there. His accomplishment in attaining that honor was diminished in the eyes of many by the perception that he’d been favored because of his race, not his qualifications. (Now, the really awful BC, whose charisma on a 1 to 10 scale was -3, well, I could believe that she was BC to fulfill a quota, because it sure wasn’t her leadership talent that got her there. And that didn’t help the rest of the women in the Brigade.)
Unfortunately, it didn’t end with graduation. Another officer on the aircraft carrier (my second ship) scoffed at me (completely out of the blue), “You’re just the senior OOD because you’re a girl.”
“No, I was delegated the senior OOD because I kick butt on the bridge, thank you very much.” But, again, my qualifications didn’t erase his suspicion that I was just there because of favored treatment for my gender.
Our local paper has had several Democrats writing in over the course of the primaries to insist that we all “had to” vote for Hillary because she’s a woman or for Obama because he’s black, and the country is “due” for a woman/black president. Great, so you nominated someone who is blatantly underqualified just so you could say you had the first black presidential nominee? That doesn’t promote “post-racial” thinking; it’s just reverse discrimination. And it does not make anything easier for those who will follow.
The common saying among women officers in the Navy was that we had to work twice as hard and be twice as good to get half as much recognition as the guys. It wasn’t true on all ships, but it was true on too many. Not only did we have to impress those who thought we shouldn’t be in “their Navy” at all, we had to win over those who suspected we were getting special treatment. The same thing often happens to minorities in the Navy, too. The push to make the officer ranks “more diverse” has resulted in people getting accepted into officer programs or promoted who really couldn’t handle it; this erodes the respect that other members of that minority get, even if they’re well qualified (not to mention what gets said if they’re only average officers or worse). There has been a recent well-publicized push to increase the diversity of the flag ranks (i.e. admirals); right now, the flag ranks do not reflect the ethnic makeup of the U.S. … but they do pretty closely reflect the ethnic makeup of the new officers of about twenty years ago, which is the group they are drawing admirals from. With this forced diversity, however, what will be the first thought on many people’s minds when the next minority makes flag rank? “Did he really deserve it? I heard that so-and-so got passed over because he’s white…”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be thrilled to see a black man nominated by a major party for president of the United States. It does say something about how far we’ve come. The nomination of this particular candidate also says something about how far we have to go.
Dr. King, in his famous speech in D.C. said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
That means not only no discrimination, but no special preferences.
I’ll close on another quick anecdote from my Academy days. In an effort to instill some leadership ability in us midshipmen, various famous speakers were brought in. A few were pretty impressive. One of the best was Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of Great Britain. Some lieutenant commander, looking to improve his “equal opportunity” score on his fitness report, asked this rambling, drawn-out, over-PC question that finally concluded with, “So, when do you think the U.S. will have a woman president?”
Mrs. Thatcher regarded him with a mixture of disdain, disbelief, and honest confusion. “Well,” she drawled, “When you have a woman who’s qualified for the job, obviously.”
I wish I could say I believed that reflected how we select political candidates.
I agree, it will show how far we’ve come when we aren’t pointing out a person’s race or gender when we speak of them running for office.
When I speak my dislike/distrust of Obama, the presidential candidate in some circles on the basis I do not agree with his idea of change (some changes are not always good), nor do I think he is the person I want leading our country at this time; I am automatically labeled a “racist right wing wacko”.