Election 2008: race is more than black and white

In the current American presidential election, race has become a pivotal issue. Obama is the first African American man to have a legitimate chance of becoming president of the United States. Blacks and whites vacillate between a celebratory end of the racial divide, and the further entrenchment of racial hostilities.

The post racial world debate has gone mainstream, giving rise to conversations that are long overdue.

While we are continually refining the discourse surrounding race, what has become patently obvious is that the term people of colour stands for black. The United States has a historical legacy of black disenfranchisement that clearly needs to be addressed. Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the rape and sterilization of black women have left a lasting legacy on the social psyche; however this should not erase other bodies of colour from our social conversations. Neither of the candidates, nor mainstream media has made an attempt to specifically address the needs of Muslims, Native Americans, Asians, or Latinos. The aforementioned are the bodies that have become erased. Colour cannot and should not be solely represented by blacks.

Though Muslims are not all of colour they constitute a group of people that have come under extreme social attack since 911. They are continually constructed as terrorists, as well having their status as “real Americans” questioned on a daily basis. They face discrimination in employment and have had their Mosques defaced. Their very right to share space in the social sphere is continually challenged. That they must ask permission to broadcast the call to prayer while church bells ring hourly, is a sign of the degree to which they are ‘othered’ in this Judeo-Christian society.

Obama has regularly been accused of being Muslim, and has had to continually swear his allegiance to the cross to relieve the racist, panic-ridden fears of the white majority. This association with the religion of the ‘other’ has never been attached to McCain, due in large part to the fact that whiteness is assumed by default to be Christian. Neither of these men actively seek to gain the Muslim vote, though Muslims representation in the US population is rising daily.

Seeking to gain the Muslim vote would be deemed traitorous by white voters, as it is the common belief that the allegiance of one that practices Islam is to Allah, and not the red white and blue. It is interesting to note that Christians are never accused of placing God before their country; rather the specific phrasing of God and Country constructs it as a dual allegiance. That someone practicing Islam could indeed share such a concept is not part of the social consciousness. Allah is not considered the God of real (read: white) Americans.

I have been waiting anxiously for either Obama or McCain to address the needs of Native Americans in their commentary and election pledges. With every step that they take on Native land their refusal to discuss Native American issues is not only tacit silencing, it is offensive and racist. Both the democrats and the republicans continue to have issues securing the vote of women. When they attempt to gain the confidence of women they are specifically seeking those that supported Hillary Clinton without realizing that women cannot be conceived of as a monolith.

The needs of a poor Native woman and a middle/upper class white woman are diametrically opposed to one another.

According to a study [PDF link] written by The Institute for Institute for Women’s Policy Research Native American women who work full-time, full-year in the U.S. earn $25,500, and they make only 58 cents for every dollar white men in the country make.

The report says 25% – one in four – of American Indian women in the U.S. live in poverty. The number is even greater for Native American single mothers: more than a third (38%) of families headed by a Native American single mother live in poverty. Only 69% of Native American mothers begin prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy, compared with the rate of 83% for all women.

The death rate for American Indian infants is also higher: nearly 10 American Indian babies in 100,000 die before their first birthday, compared with nearly 6 white babies in 100,000. The rate of AIDS for Native American women is more than twice that of white women, although Native American women have lower mortality rates of heart disease and breast cancer than most other women.

White women have never had to deal with the twin stigmatization of race and gender in the same manner as Native Women. They have never been portrayed as the drunken squaw, or the obliging native princess suitably tamed for white male consumption. They have never been told that they need to be domesticated or that their ways of mothering are uniquely dirty or unhealthy for a child.

In fact, it is white women during the time of the Dawes Act who specifically tried to socialize Native Women into so-called scientific home management. It was white women in their racist, self-righteous indignation that sought to ensure that Native women were sterilized to decrease the so-called surplus population. To this day many Native women do not trust the medical establishment because of the harm that was done.

I must ask, since both candidates are concerned with getting women’s votes, why is there not a specific address to Native women? Where is the pledge to increase funding so that the mass rapes of aboriginal women cannot only be investigated but prosecuted? Where is the pledge to provide funding so that these women may get the counselling that they need to heal from such vicious violation? Finally where is the pledge to increase access to medical treatment on or near reserves so Native women may receive preventative health care?

Native women do not count. Though they are indeed bodies that are racialized, neither of the candidates, or the media has seen fit to include them in our so-called conversation of race and inequality.

Do Asian Americans exist? Listening to the debates one would believe that Asians have become as mainstream and acceptable as apple pie and ice cream. They have universally been touted as the race that has made it. They are all successful, have achieved higher education, and are the perfect example of the American Dream. Of course this is news to the families that work nearly around the clock to eke out an existence. It is the very idea that they have achieved equality with whiteness and white power that validates their erasure.

Invisibility as acceptance is problematic. What it means is that universally Asians are not valued. On a typical night of television watching one is hard pressed to see any Asian characters, unlike blacks who routinely debate whether or not there has been good or bad representation. The invisible Asian erases them from discourse thus creating any of their social needs as nonexistent.

If you are considered to be established, and acceptable what need is there to point out that Asian women are routinely constructed as traditionally submissive china dolls, or as the ultimate lotus flower eagerly awaiting a white male saviour? An established successful race has no need to point out that Asian males are routinely feminized when contrasted to white males in an attempt to ensure that the perceived status of success does not translate into an actual shift in the power structure. Their continued invisibility in our historic racial conversations serves to high light how deeply their contributions are “respected,” and their agency and autonomy “validated.”

Neither party feels it is necessary to address them specifically because it has been deemed that they think like whites and therefore they will vote like whites. Any special issues that they may have are largely deemed illusionary.

Latinos have been discussed in the presidential race. Their inclusion has largely been in reference to immigration and the ongoing racial divide with blacks. Pundits speculated as to whether or not Barack would get the Latino vote because apparently blacks and Latinos have been engaged in turf wars for years. When the Latino community is understood as American, they are nevertheless perceived as violent gang members.

The ongoing racial tension is what was hypothesized as making them more likely to support Hillary than Barack. In maintenance of racial and social hierarchy Hillary was deemed to present a viable roadblock to the ascendency of a black man to the office of the presidency. According to, Albert M. Camarillo, founding director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford, “There have been enormous misunderstandings and conflicts over local resources and political representations between the two groups which simmer right below the surface and sometimes erupt.”

The idea that there is a monolithic voice for Latinos is mendacious. Somehow Clinton was understood as being more in touch with the community because she “ate a taco and sat on the couch of a Latino family in East Los Angeles”. Clearly all that is needed to bond with Latinos is to eat the “national dish” and be white. That there is a history of white racism against Latinos is certainly not necessary to discuss.

The construction of Latina women as hot tamales eager to mate, to gain American citizenship through pregnancy, is not worthy of deconstruction. Even the mass rape that Latina women face when attempting to illegally cross the border has been ignored to deal with whether or not building a fence is an appropriate response to the “real issues of immigration”.

The current race for the White House has seen many firsts, combined Hillary and Barack represent the closest that a woman, and an African American have ever been to running the oval office. That socially we are beginning to discuss race and the systemic nature of racism in popular debate is clearly a positive step. However, if race is restricted to blacks, thus marginalizing other groups, we will not have a truly open conversation.

Black cannot stand solely for person of colour in a society wherein all bodies that are deemed non white are subject to racism and social discipline. That it may affect us differently is highly significant to our ongoing conversations. To privilege the experience of one group over another is to participate in oppression Olympics. No form of ‘othering’ dignifies the human experience, and until we can acknowledge that we all have an important role to play, this will continue to be a stunted conversation.

All bodies matter.