How presidential race is a black or white issue

Daily Features

Barack Obama has tried to steer clear of the race issue during his primary campaign

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

By Walter Ellis

Just imagine what the reaction would have been if the following fictitious stories had made the headlines this month in this newspaper and on radio and television.

* Three PSNI officers were today found not guilty of the manslaughter of Sean Bell, a 24-year-old Catholic shot 50 times by police while leaving a nightclub on the eve of his wedding. The officers claimed that Bell was preparing to fire on them from his car, but no gun was found. Two of Bell's friends, also Catholic, who were seriously wounded during the incident, claimed that the case showed the clear anti-Catholic bias of the PSNI.

* A car chase which ended in Derry's Creggan district with three Catholic men being dragged from their vehicle and beaten senseless by 13 PSNI officers has caused outrage in the nationalist community. A UTV video of the incident shows the men being set upon by the officers, who punched, kicked and struck them repeatedly with their truncheons before arresting them and charging them with aggravated assault. The Chief Constable immediately expressed his regret over what happened but warned against any "rush to judgment".

* A high-ranking Catholic Assistant Chief Constable has claimed that he was harrassed and abused yesterday by Protestant officers while off duty and in plain clothes. The ACC was sitting in his car, a police-issue Range Rover, in west Belfast when two Protestant officers demanded to know where he had got the money to buy his vehicle. One tried to force his way into the car and only backed off when the ACC produced his ID.

* In other news, a Stormont DUP minister told the Belfast Telegraph today that she represented the "hard-working" section of Ulster society, which she went on to define as the "Protestant people". The minister also said that a DUP colleague, who recently criticised her running of her department, had relations in Co Donegal but was not a secret Catholic — "as far as I know."

Make a few adustments — most obviously 'black' for 'Catholic' — and you have got the situation in the United States today.

African-Americans believe they are being targeted by the police and the courts and that large sections of white society hold them in contempt. That this should be happening when Barack Obama is about to clinch the Democratic Party nomination. But it is a fact.

Obama's rise to prominence has come at a price. Blacks are being scrutinised as never before. It is as if White America, having given its reluctant blessing to Obama, is putting African-Americans on notice. Behave yourselves, the message goes, or all this tolerance, all this acceptance of your equality, could vanish.

Not that Sean Bell, a black New Yorker, was thinking about politics when he and his friends were gunned down in November 2006.

Bell was just trying to go home after his stag-night. Three young black men dragged from their car last week in Philadelphia were not weighing up the potential blessings of an Obama presidency when 13 uniformed officers gave them an unmerciful beating, not realising that they were being filmed by Fox News.

NYPD Chief Douglas Zeigler wasn't exulting at the prospect of a black man in the Oval Office when he was abused by two junior officers who seemingly mistook him for a suspicious-looking black guy in a white man's car.

But what about Hillary Clinton? Surely she is above all that. Apparently not. One of the sadder facts to emerge recently was the reported unwillingness of large numbers of Clinton supporters to transfer their votes to Barack Obama if he becomes Democratic standard bearer.

That was bad enough. These Rust Belt reactionaries may hold the key to the November elections. Worse, though, was Mrs Clinton's response. She told USA Today that she represented "hard-working Americans — white Americans " in a way that Obama could never hope to do.

She added that she had the support of most White Americans who hadn't managed to finish their education. A proud boast!

Obama has tried hard to steer away from the race issue. But Clinton won't let him. Instead, she keeps on stating that he is the "black" candidate.

At least Ulster has moved on. John McCain will be laughing all the way to the polling booth.