In his column today, the WaPo’s Peter Beinart argues that race, in a general sense, is dogging Barack Obama, and undermining his chances at winning the White House. This is likely to get worse, Beinart argues, because race will be “central to this campaign because McCain needs it to be. He simply doesn’t have many other cards to play.”
Beinart recommends that Obama get out in front of the issue, “control the race debate,” and make a policy pronouncement on ending race-based affirmative action, replacing it with class-based affirmative action. As Beinart sees it, “even racists can be wooed,” and this would help Obama connect.
Paradoxically, [Obama’s] best shot at deracializing the campaign is to explicitly make race an issue.
He can do that with a high-profile speech — and maybe a TV ad — calling for the replacement of race-based preferences with class-based ones. That would confront head-on white fears that an Obama administration would favor minorities at whites’ expense. It would be a sharper, more dramatic, way of making the point that Obama has made ever since he took the national stage (but which some whites still refuse to believe): that he represents not racial division but national unity. […]
Race isn’t going away as a factor in American life, of course. But the defining American problem of the 21st century may not be the “color line
,” as W.E.B. Du Bois suggested about the 20th. In an age of growing multiculturalism and growing economic inequality, it may be the class line instead. By calling for a different kind of affirmative action, Obama could acknowledge that profound change — and help propel himself to the White House at the same time.
There’s a reasonable case to be made for class-based affirmative action. Indeed, Beinart’s policy argument is relatively sound.
But Beinart’s campaign strategy isn’t working for me, in large part because I think he overestimates the perceptions of racists.
Look, I have no idea how many voters are going to oppose Obama strictly on race, and how many more are going to rationalize other reasons to oppose Obama, when the animus really is driven by racism.
But I’m thinking about some of the racists that I’ve known (and even some that I’m related to) and I don’t think a policy shift on affirmative action is going to do the trick.
White, racist voters who oppose Obama do so because he’s black, not because he supports affirmative action. If you told those same white, racist voters that Obama now supports a class-based affirmative action system, most would probably respond, “Yeah, but he’s still a secret Muslim who doesn’t like the Pledge of Allegiance.”
“[E]ven racists can be wooed,” Beinart argues. Maybe, maybe not. But Obama is wooing them, with a stronger economy, a smarter foreign policy, a universal healthcare system, a cleaner environment, etc.
If a voter is prepared to put race above the interests of his/her self-interest and the strength of the country, a shift on affirmative-action policy isn’t likely to make much of a difference.