The first time I ever heard the expression, "he's not ready"— as in, "he, a black man, is not ready"— I was sitting in a tree with my best friend Laura Martin, in 1969. A black councilman in Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, was running against incumbent mayor Sam Yorty, a good ole' boy if there ever was one.
Our legs dangled from a big avocado tree in the back yard. Laura and I loved being out of our Catholic schoolgirl uniforms and hanging out in our cutoffs. I'd been at St. Rita's for a year, and thought it odd that every single student there was white. But we were all for civil rights, weren't we?
I found out different that day. It was just before the election, and true to my mom's liberal beliefs, I was ecstatic about getting out the vote for Tom Bradley. I asked Laura if she wanted to go down to the Superette, and pass out leaflets.
She looked at me like I was crazy. "The colored people have got it all wrong," she said, no doubt echoing her own mommy. "Tom Bradley is not ready to be mayor of Los Angeles; he and the other colored have got to know their place and stop pushing."
I wasn't very good at argument at age eleven and I was little bit impulsive. Okay, maybe more than a little.
"That's not true, Sam Yorty is a pig, that's RAY-CIST!" I cried. And when she smirked at my red face, the tears welling up— oh Laura, how could you ridicule me!— I pushed her out of the tree.
I felt a little pushy again this morning, reading the exit polls and editorials following the Democratic 2008 primary. I've often been in this place, where I am not "in love" with either candidate— by a long shot— and yet I'm outraged when either of them are damned with euphemistic racist or sexist evaluations.
It seems like the down-low way to diss Obama, from the Clinton campaign, is to say that he's "not ready" to be President. Many people embrace this expression quite innocently, since they count the years that Hillary has been in office, or even been alive, and point out that she is the elder. True enough.
But this expression of "not being ready" has a legacy in the American Civil War and African apartheid. It's the other face of the "uppity Negro" complaint, a phrase no one can say with a straight face anymore.
Ian Smith, the Rhodesian prime minister and apartheid defender, became notorious for saying, "the black man is not ready to run Africa before a thousand years.” His church supporters, people like Cardinal McCann, proclaimed: "the black man is not ready to assume control of his destiny."
And that's just recent history. It started with the abolitionist movement in the US, when slavery-protesters like Frederick Douglas were deemed "uppity"' because they had the nerve to call for emancipation.
If there's a doubt about precedent, I'd suggest you look at ANY electoral contest where a black candidate is facing a white incumbent, and you'll find some version of this race-coding.
The uniqueness of the 2008 Presidential race is that we get to celebrate our maturity in moving past the poison of prejudice. But we also witness seeping resentments against black and female candidates that show how far we've got to go. It's dug up a lot of unexpressed grudges and trash.
The Clintons have already been spanked in recent weeks for Bill's intemperate Jesse Jackson remarks, for downplaying MLK and the achievement of the black power movement (I never thought I'd see the day LBJ got coronated for that!) and damning Barak with faint praise by admiting that he is "articulate"— for a black man, of course!
Meanwhile, Obama's campaign has not joined in with the "conniving, teary-eyed bitch needs to get back in the laundry room" misogyny that the Republican camp has no trouble slinging. Is he just being a sensible campaigner, or does it repulse him, as one would love to assume? I'd like to think he's a feminist, an equal rights campaigner, and mindful of the strong women in his life.
Now's the time for Hillary to speak up from her side and condemn this "not ready" garbage. No one gets to this level of a presidential campaign who's not ready— even if all that means is to be ready to serve at the corporate leisure, as George Bush has demonstrated. Like Mike Huckabee, Obama's ready to take the job, whether he's going be a "greatest-ever" president or not!
I'm not holding my breath for the Clintons to step up to the plate, and speak out against slight-of-word racial undercutting. So far, they've been content to play this trope against Obama's surging popularity. Unlike some of her followers, Hillary knows exactly what dynamite she's playing with. The only question is, will it blow up in her campaign's face?
Photo: Go Tell Mama
