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"Scam" ads the norm Trail Mix: Hillary haters spam cyberspace Gunning for the center Democrats make Hillary legit The blundering pundit Don Giuliani Campaign video: |
Black like us
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Feb. 22, 2000 | NEW YORK -- Watching the two contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination debate is usually a painful experience (one veteran journalist remarked recently that she'd "rather have a root canal than sit through another one"), but this event was perversely entertaining in that the issue being debated seemed to be which of these white Ivy League grads with kids in elite private schools can show that he feels the pain of black America the most. It was a remarkable change of pace for a national political culture that just last week was consumed by the spectacle of the Republican candidates pandering to white people who like to fly the Confederate flag in South Carolina. This, by contrast, was a 90-minute debate driven by the concerns of minorities and poor people. All of the questions (save those by journalists) were asked by people of color, and they were different from the usual political questions -- for example, the questions about crime focused on the plight of the people being arrested.
Bradley stated that he would issue an executive order to eliminate racial profiling. "White Americans can no longer deny the plight of black Americans," he concluded, to uproarious applause. The shooting of Amadou Diallo in New York, he said, "reflects racial profiling in the sense that seeps into the mind of someone, so that he sees a wallet in the hands of a white man as a wallet but a wallet in the hands of a black man as a gun." Gore did him one better, saying he'd pass a law outlawing racial profiling, whose effects extend into banking, insurance, schooling and people's hearts. He concluded with a lyrical coup de grāce, declaring with the intonation of a Southern preacher that he was going to put "as much energy in ed-u-ca-tion as we do into in-car-cer-a-tion." (Gore may have become a bit too fond of this rhyming scheme. Later, responding to a question about whether African-Americans are owed reparations for slavery, he roared: "I believe the best rep-ar-a-tion is a good ed-u-ca-tion -- and affirmative action.") Bradley charged back, complaining that President Clinton should have outlawed racial profiling and arguing that Gore led an effort to end affirmative action at the federal level. It's on Page 208 of George Stephanopolous' book, he noted, and on cue, Bradley's aides dutifully handed out press releases to reporters to back this up. And, Bradley asserted, Gore voted to maintain the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory schools like South Carolina's Bob Jones University, which, as every political junkie in the country now knows, bans interracial dating. "That is a phony and scurrilous charge," yelped Gore, who went on to accuse Bradley of voting against affirmative action for minority-owned broadcasting companies in the Senate -- prompting loud hoots from the audience.
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