When Race and Gender are Two-Edged Swords

NRO: Monsters and Racists and Sexists, Oh My! — Free speech, it seems, is no longer so free in the political arena. By Kathleen Parker

Race and gender, once the courted darlings of the Democrats, are becoming party poopers.

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[Samantha] Power was sacrificed on the altar of a nice politics that exists only in the rhetoric of the presidential candidates. As for [Geraldine] Ferraro, her statement wasn’t racist so much as it was racial. It is, in fact, unlikely that anyone else with Obama’s experience — just two years in the U.S. Senate before he began running for president — would get this close to the White House.

There are lots of reasons for Obama’s success that have nothing to do with race. But there’s also this: You can’t separate race from who Obama is. He is the biracial man. Although he self-identifies as African-American, it is precisely his dual race — and his own personal work toward identity integration and transcendence — that allows him to speak effectively of racial reconciliation and national unity in ways that a white male, or another black male for that matter, could not.

So, yes, Ferraro was partly right. If Obama were white, he probably wouldn’t be where he is.