“Oh, Geraldine…”
Geraldine Ferraro is a bit like your dotty old grandmother who occasionally makes references to the “coloureds” or the “negroes” in thinly veiled racist remarks— “I know he’s coloured, but gosh darn he can really sing!”
And so, we smile awkwardly, give Granny a kiss and move on with our lives, thanking the Prime Mover that we were born in a more enlightened time. Despite calls for her head on a platter for insisting that Barack Obama is only in the presidential running because he’s a black man, I still love Geraldine Ferraro.
It may seem odd to say that I have affection for a woman who was a U.S. Congresswoman and vice presidential candidate before I was born. But I look at Geraldine—a candidate who prefers to keep the bull to a minimum and speak her mind, consequences be damned— with admiration.
After teaching in New York City, Ferraro became a prosecutor in the Queen’s County Office, and was subsequently elected to the Unites States House of Representatives from 1979 to 1985. She ran on a pro-choice platform, in opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, whom she told in no uncertain terms to shut up and let her run her campaign.
As Walter Mondale’s vice presidential candidate, she attacked then-vice president George H.W. Bush for criticizing Reagan’s “voodoo economics” in the 1980 primaries:
“I, too, recall when Vice President Bush was running in the primary against President Reagan and he called the program voodoo economics, and it was and it is” she said. Voodoo economics, distrust for Bush, and especially Reagan? Be still my heart.
When asked what she thought of Ms. Ferraro, Barbara Bush, that frigid WASP who made oysters tremble with her pearls, replied that she surely couldn’t comment, but that the word she had in mind rhymed with “rich.” Quite a statement coming from the woman who brought us Dubya, Jeb, and the original poster girl for Paula Abdul’s single “Cold Hearted Snake.” The only thing that could have made it better was an attack from Maggie Thatcher.
But the real reason I have sympathy for Geraldine lies in a much more deeprooted issue in the American psyche: race. Author and historian Studs Terkel called race “the great American obsession,” and so it remains today.
I want, desperately, to be able to look towards an America that’s ready for a black president. I want to look towards an America that doesn’t focus on identity politics, with campaigns that aren’t determined by the amount of money raised, but by the validity of the candidate’s stand on the issues that matter to Americans. In short, I long for a return to the once-admirable republic. Obviously this is not the present case.
When one factors in the media ruckus caused by Obama’s minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who has declared much of America and its government to be racist against blacks, it becomes glaringly apparent how divided America remains, not over class, which may actually benefit the vast majority of Americans, but rather race. Rev. Wright uses rhetoric common to black ministers in the 1960s. He uses it because it is true.
What Rev. Wright and Ms. Ferraro expose is something that I have been saying quietly to my friends since the beginning of all of the campaigns: that America is not prepared to elect a black man as its president.
Mr. Obama has inspired a great deal of hope among Americans of all classes and races, a step in the recovery from the racial divide that still plagues America. But the fact remains that we are where we are, and where we are is none too pretty.
Geraldine’s comments may be unsavoury indeed, but they reflect more than just her views: she has put a mirror up to Americans and exposed a festering wound. Let’s lay off Geraldine and start working on ourselves.
