The Thinking Minority

What do you think?

As far as I can tell, Ferraro's comments come across as racist. Maybe she's not a racist, I dunno. If not, she's just plain stupid. I could be wrong, but that's my opinion. She could be telling it like it is. She could also be telling me that being excited by a black person running for President is wrong and I shouldn't do that. On the other hand, being black never helped Alan Keyes seem more attractive to me as a candidate for anything.

"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,' Ferraro said. 'Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Reality: Racism doesn't work in two different directions. You're either an idiot or you're not. You're either willing to say something hurtful to win or you're not. It's just one way. I'm not on the other side of the fence.

People are attacking you because you are alienating a significant voter base in the middle of the primaries to win by inciting racism. How do you plan to bring these people back to Hillary if she wins the nomination?

Polls have shown that 90% of the black voters in Mississippi voted for Obama, while only 30% of whites voted for him. What does this mean? He's winning because he's black? Possibly. What else could it mean? Mississippi is steeped in years of racist tradition? Uh huh. Anything else? An important demographic for the democratic party is black people. Yep.

"In all honesty, do you think that if he were a white male, there would be a reason for the black community to get excited for a historic first?" Ferraro said. "Am I pointing out something that doesn't exist?"

What I've seen personally is people crossing party lines to vote for this man - blacks, whites, Puerto Ricans, and Samoans alike. It could very well be just rhetoric, but it's rhetoric that transcends the bounds of traditional politics. It transcends things like race and gender. It excites people in a good way. It makes them care and it makes them want to get involved.

Ferraro said she was not trying to diminish Obama's candidacy, and acknowledged up front that she would not have been the vice presidential nominee in 1984 if she had been a man.

If she's not trying to diminish his candidacy, why would she even go down this path? What else would her purpose be? She never mentions that this is a sign of change in this country…that race may not be the liability that it once was.

Ferraro's comments have excited me in a bad way. I'm angry. I'm angry because there's some truth in her statements. That Obama has gotten this far in part because he's black (but then there’s Vermont, Iowa, Maine, etc.), but it’s a liability for him in Pennsylvania. Let's flip it though. Hillary is a woman and she's running for President. Would she be able to do this if she were black? Would educated whites run out and vote for her? Would she inspire college students to believe in our political process? Probably not. If Hillary wasn't white, would she be where she is today? If she wasn’t white, would she be able to exploit race as a political tool in Pennsylvania?

"Sexism is a bigger problem,' Ferraro argued. 'It's OK to be sexist in some people's minds. It's not OK to be racist."

Apparently 30% of voters for both candidates felt that race was a deciding factor in choosing a candidate. Racism may not be socially acceptable, but it's alive and well. When was the last time large groups of people were rounded up because they possessed a certain type of genitalia? When was the last big rally of an organization sponsoring hate crimes against people of the opposite sex?

Not to say that sexism isn’t a problem, but it doesn’t seem to be what is keeping Hillary down. Being white and rich certainly isn’t hurting her either. I don’t see her complaining about that. I'm going to ask my mother if she thinks that being black or being a woman has been harder.