Law Students

I Am the Racial Switzerland

Given the topics and comments of my recent post, I found today?s jury law class to be timely. I really enjoy the class (though it?s not as practical as I?d hope), and we often talk about jury bias, using a recent study on, of all things, racially biased calls by referees in the NBA. The discussion led us to log on, as a class, to the following website: www.implicit.harvard.edu. (Click on demonstrationàGo to Demonstration Tests àI wish to proceedà RACE IAT.) This website is supposed to be fool proof on showing how racist people are and, if you answer the questions to the best of your ability, there is no way of gaming the result. Allegedly. 60 % of takers of the test have a slight to strong automatic preference for white as compared to black people.

Anyway, we took the test as a class and low and behold, I fall into the 17% of people who have little or no preference between black and white people. Hallelujah. My wife (who is half black) will be so pleased. I?ll be giving a speeches on racial tolerance later this week.

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Speaking of race, here are some quick thoughts on the Barrack Obama pastor thing. I like Barrack Obama. And I believe him when he says (my favorite line from yesterday?s speech): ?For as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.? But his credibility has been hurt by this from my perspective. His church is a racist church but he tries to reject the controversial aspects of his church without totally rejecting the church as a whole. He refers to Jeremiah Wright as his ?former? pastor yet proclaims proudly that he married and baptized his family. He claims to be unaware that Wright was controversial, at least before yesterday?s speech. You can?t get around, however, how overtly racist his church is. When you click on his church?s (Trinity United Church of Christ) website: the church?s logo is superimposed with the African continent. Now imagine for a moment that John McCain was married, baptized and regularly attended a church whose primary mission is this:

We are a congregation which is Unashamedly White and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the White religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are a White people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization... We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a White worship service and ministries which address the White Community.

It would be ridiculous to think that McCain would not be rejected out right if he proclaimed an allegiance to a church like that. It would be even more ridiculous if McCain sole qualification for president was a claim of being the avatar of racial hope and healing, especially coming from a background like that. It would be even more unthinkable if McCain?s wife?s senior thesis was on the racial divide and that she felt like a white person first and a student second.

Again, I like Obama as a person. I think he is a good man and I think he gave a good speech yesterday. But I don?t think he has a lick of experience, and that seems to be a plus for most Obama people I talk to. They like a fresh start and site his potential for good judgment (conceding that he has never really had an opportunity to routinely exercise good judgment in public life.) I don?t know what advice I would give him if I could. Obama has tried to avoid talking about race. The Clintons have attempted to inject race into the campaign, but it was only when Obama?s own pastor?s theology and political ideology came out that the issue of race began to stick. The more Obama talks about race, the worse it will be for him. I think he?ll attempt to move on from this. However, when a person?s values emerge from such a racist and anti-American cesspool as Trinity United, when a person eschews signs of patriotism and when one?s spouse is so demonstrably negative about her country, I have to say, at a minimum I have to be extremely cynical when a person like that attempts to be a unifying force.

Full post as published by SoapBox Law on March 19, 2008 (boomark / email).