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I intend to vote for Barrack Obama in November. Go ahead and call this Obama supporter (me) a racist, but one of the reasons I'm voting for him is because he's black. (There's one other--that he opposes this execrable war.) Were these two elements not there, Obama would not have my vote because he lacks experience. Putting his inexperience aside, however, I think it's past time for young kids to see a black man in the Whitehouse and leading this country. That it's likely this will occur is a great thing. And I also have some hope that even if Obama lacks experience, he could not possibly be worse than the existing President installed by the Supreme Court and will likely be far better.
One other point about your piece annoys me--the whole "whining" about affirmative action bit. When I was in grad school I officed with another PhD candidate who was black. She had her tuition and books paid for 100%, while I struggled and had to take off a semester due to financial problems. We were friendly and worked on a number of projects together. One day she looked at me and said, "You know what? This sucks. You're as talented as I am--more so. I feel incredibly guilty about having this just because I'm black. This doesn't seem fair." Well, since my GPA was higher than hers, my work was typically superior, and my efforts exceeded hers (and they did, not to sound like one of those whiners you spoke of earlier), and she had a guaranteed job when she took her doctorate, while for me it would be a real crap-shoot to ever get tenure track, she was right in one sense, but wrong in another. I told her I did not begrudge her what she had because she was black. It was important and is still important for college kids to see black role models, to see African Americans succeeding and leading. Was I not supposed to notice that someone less talented than I was had full-funding, while I was struggling to stay in school? Was I not supposed to notice that she had a guaranteed post-graduate career, while I didn't? Was she not supposed to notice? I guess seeing reality makes us both racists? The end to that anecdote is that she's still teaching, and I ended up leaving academia. As far as I'm concerned, the right person had those scholarships and funding, even though we both had the temerity to notice that she had a full scholarship at least partially because she was black, while I had to scrounge for every funded dollar I got. My tone is wistful, hopefully, and not whining. (As an fyi, my family was too poor to pay for college for me, and I did not come from a wealthy background--far from it.)
To conclude, I admire Barrack Obama, and I sincerely hope he'll be the kind of President this country needs. And one reason this country needs a President like him is because he's black. I'm going to vote for him with that in mind.
And I'm not saying I'm sorry for that.
This rude media cycle against Ferraro where her quotes were taken out of context and used to stir up divisive feelings, creating an atomosphere where it almost becomes insulting to mention either race or gender as a positive attribute seems really counter-productive to me. Why don't you figure out something better to write about than trashing the career of a 70 + year old woman? Who are YOU to judge her work and what the hell do you really know about it, despite your insinuating tone to the countrary? You'll probably be lucky if you ever accomplish half of what she did. Or try this. Figure out that it's a good thing we have a black man as a serious candidate for the highest political office in the land. Why is that no one is allowed to state that him being an African American is part of his appeal to a number of voters? Why is everyone so afraid of the obvious? Leave Ferraro alone.
