It Isn't About Race!

Race isn't the issue. As much as Obama's tried to point in that direction in his mid March speech, it is wrong! Is this a characteristic case of a politician answering an uncomfortable question by changing the subject? Is he solving his issue of the moment by trying to make the average citizen feel more discomfort than he is feeling at the moment? His campaign theme is "change". What we didn't understand was that meant changing the subject! When you read Robert Freer's article you'll see that he does an excellent job of dissecting the speech and explaining the real problems facing our county.

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

“But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.” Senator Obama, 3/19/08

By now virtually no one in America has missed hearing about the speech on race given by Senator Obama in response to criticism leveled at his continued close relationship with the pastor of his Baptist church in Chicago. Pastor Wright, over the years, with the Senator sometimes in attendance, has engaged in vitriolic sermons that have depicted the United States in starkly racial stereotypes, dammed it and celebrated attacks and damage to it as being deserved.

The Senator’s speech, a tribute in its flowing prose and rhetorical flourish to his Ivy League education, was immediately lauded by the usual suspects in the liberal media as being Lincolnesque and dammed by his detractors as reflections of a character weakness for not challenging his pastor’s hateful actions at any time during his two decades in the church. At best , critics argue, the positive parts of his speech are little more than gossamer that tells us nothing about the solutions he offers for the policy issues at the heart of what the American public wants to know.

From my perspective as a word technician, it was a beautiful speech, well given and revealed a passion and depth to this man which will be studied for years regardless of the outcome of this campaign. It was also misconceived in its coupling of white anxiety to sometimes competing concerns of black discontent, and dangerous in its appeal to perceived notions of class solidarity we haven’t seen since the nineteen thirties.

It is in this area where I have my greatest policy objections. He is like the pick pocket that whispers sweetly into your ear, and puts his arm lovingly around your shoulder while relieving you of your wallet with the other hand. His exalted prose preaches unity and hope, but his program looks to vilify corporate America and relies on white guilt to finance a massive government program to make all our problems go away courtesy of Uncle Sugar.

In his erroneous notions of class guilt, his approach would succeed only in weakening America in a time of peril. There are real challenges to American superiority, but they aren’t those of class or race, yet in meeting these challenges, we will, by our actions, provide solutions for many of the problems that Senator Obama characterizes in class and racial terms.

The problems confronting America cannot be solved by attacking class, race or corporate status. They can however be solved through improved productivity. The Senator does a disservice to the millions of Americans, who have made us the competitive marvel that we are, but we are not alone and only nimble entrepreneurship can keep us in the race.

In a column about a year ago I noted, “For every one in a million student in China, there are 1300 just like him. In India there are 1100. The 25% brightest students in China exceed the total population of North America. (That’s 28% for India.) They have more honors students than we have students. China is about to pass the United States as the country with the largest population of English speakers. If we exported all our jobs to China, they could fill all of them and still have a surplus population. .

“The Department of Labor tells us that one out of four of us have been employed by our present employer less than a year, and one out of two has been with their employer less than five years. They cite former governor Riley for the fact that the top ten jobs in 2010 have not been invented yet. In fact an individual starting their technical education today will have the information taught in the first year become obsolete before the end of year three. “We are educating kids for jobs that haven’t been invented yet with information that is outdated to answer questions we don’t even know we have.”The challenge is stark. The challenge is immediate, and our survival depends on how well we embrace the challenge. It is not government that is the greatest force in education. It is business, and it is business, good old home in the USA business, that is holding its own in the global competition we are powerless to stop.

One thing is certain; this market will be filled by our children or those from other parts of the world who can do the job. The public’s failure to properly fund education is significant in the risk it poses to our society of social stratification and its accompanying stresses. Our free society is up to solving both the educational and social problems that confront us, but time is passing, and our failures to protect our basic values compound the challenge. Porous borders and distain for individual responsibility are sapping the national will.

Senator Obama’ s approach would only make the problem worse by looking to government, never a very adaptive instrument, to meet the needs of our population for tomorrow’s jobs today. Reliance on big government, particularly one suspicious of business, would cripple us in our battle to stay ahead in the global challenge to shape tomorrow.

Railing at lobbyists and corporations won’t do a thing to help our citizens. Retraining, fast write offs, and low taxes to arm our business with the tools it needs, will do a lot more than divisive efforts to play either a race card or a mistaken notion of class to cope with the future that emerges inexorably day by day. Faced with economic dislocation, tax credits for retaining and retraining would go a lot further than railing at NAFTA to keep our workers productive and well off.

We mustn’t be misled by election rhetoric. It is not more government that will lead us to the future but ourselves. Regardless of any stereotype, working hard together to defend our way of life, American ingenuity, free enterprise and a workforce that comes to grips with its need to constantly retrain itself is what will win the day. Life in America today is challenging, but it is a good life, one we fashion ourselves and one which continues to lure the rest of the world to emulate us. It deserves more respect than Senator Obama‘s term paper grants it.

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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