Three different stories in Tuesday’s Virginian-Pilot provide a snapshot of where America is on the issue of race. The first two stories were news stories, the third an op-ed piece.
The first story dealt with a report released yesterday by the Census Bureau about voter turnout in the November election. The press release, including a link to the data, can be found here.
About 131 million people reported voting in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, an increase of 5 million from 2004, according to a new table package released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. The increase included about 2 million more black voters, 2 million more Hispanic voters and about 600,000 more Asian voters, while the number of non-Hispanic white voters remained statistically unchanged.
As I searched online for the article that was printed in the Pilot, I ran across a number of articles discussing the report. Interestingly enough, the one the Pilot reprinted was this AP story, which carries the inflammatory headline, “Voting rate dips in 2008 as older whites stay home.” Yeah, that is one conclusion. Here’s another:
The 2008 election also suggested that the gender gap will continue to be politically important. About 66% of women voted compared with 62% of men. Neither was statistically different from 2004, but 10 million more women said they voted than did men in 2008—70.4 million women compared with 60.7 million men.
Why didn’t the AP story mention that? Or is it only race that matters?
The second news story – also from the AP – deals with the arrest of “Henry Louis Gates Jr., the nation’s pre-eminent black scholar.” The headline reads as if the reason for his arrest was racial profiling. But further in the story we get to the meat:
He was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after police said he “exhibited loud and tumultuous behavior.”
Racial profiling may have brought police to his door – the call to police was for two black males trying to force entry into a home – but that’s not what got him arrested. What got him arrested was his refusal to identify himself. The idea that police should not ask someone who has appeared to have broken into a home for ID is beyond comprehension. That the AP writer’s angle in this story was racial profiling demeans the very real occasions of such and desensitizes readers to the issue. It’s like crying wolf.
Finally, we have an op-ed piece by New York Times writer Ross Douthat. A conservative blogger-turned-author, the 30 year old Douthat writes about race in 2028, a reference to former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s writings from 2003 that affirmative action “must be limited in time.” While Douthat makes some interesting points, it’s rather hard to take seriously someone who has never suffered the injustices of discrimination – and never will.
What these three stories told me today is that America still hasn’t had that big conversation on race. We cling to the notions of yesteryear without acknowledging that progress has been made but that we still have a long way to go. None of these stories advanced the collective consciousness about race and race relations.
And I wish the Pilot hadn’t printed them.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Two points:
1) The sex issue was not in the AP story because nothing had changed. The big change was in the increase in minority voting, especially since minorities vote overwhelmingly Democrat.
2) It is very difficult to have a discussion on race when charges of racism and bigotry are thrown about all the time. If a white person opposes Affirmative Action, he is called a racist, and if a black person opposes Affirmative Action, he is called an Uncle Tom.
The charges against Gates have been dropped. It’s good to see cooler heads prevail. If Gates hadn’t acted like such an ass, we would likely never have heard about this story.
Gates did act like an ass, but I would say the same for the cop. He didn’t provide his name and badge when it was requested, he followed Gates into his home uninvited while he went to get his ID, he still asked for backup from the Harvard PD despite being provided both a Harvard ID and a driver’s license, and he continually demanded that Gates step out of his own home even after he’d come to the conclusion that Gates was telling the truth.
I don’t condone Gates’ behavior, but I might have had the same reaction in similar circumstances. Had the cop simply thanked Gates and walked away once he’d seen the IDs this would have been avoided.
You do a good job of providing the revised story of the encounter provided by Gates’ Attorney.