What role has race and sex played in the election?

Rights Boy’s good friend Mike Burgher opined about the role of race and sex in the election in yesterday morning’s Des Moines Sunday Register. Since the letter was submitted, Hillary Clinton has thrown her support to Barak Obama, so the Register edited the letter to discussing the race issue only.

Please don't read this and then invite Mike or Rights Boy to speak at your KKK rally or the next burn-your-bra bonfire. It's my opinion that charges of racism and sexism in this election serve no purpose but to distract voters with short memories from looking at real issues.

You can find his edited letter, along with comments from other readers, here.The unedited opinion follows.
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It was hard to follow the twisted logic in Leonard Pitts’ article “Let’s face up to the ugly Truth,” but I think he was concluding that a black person voting for Obama wasn’t racist, but a white person voting for Hillary probably was.

Pitts’ victim argument - that white and black people aren’t equivalent, the white man always keeps the black man down, blacks are “owed” – is so old and tired. But it somehow leads him to declare that even questioning race-based entitlements is automatically off-topic and not to be taken seriously.

Pitts claims that blacks have never had a choice but to support white candidates and implies that white voters somehow owe black candidates a ‘favor.’ I assume Pitts dismisses the viability of former candidates Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and ironically forgot that when the Clinton camp made a similar gaff it was skewered as racist.

The race in the Democratic Party circus is historic this year. The sideshow includes the wooing of uncommitted super delegates as well as a game of musical chairs by Florida and Michigan. But the big tent includes a historic race between two viable candidates – a white woman and a black man.

What measure shall we use to determine the next leader of the free world? What are the important qualifications? So far, we have examined Hillary’s hair, cleavage, pantsuits, tears and her choice of ice cream. We’ve looked at Obama’s lapel, his family tree, dance moves and his church. Now pundits like Pitts are saying everything comes down to one issue, race, and white people won’t vote for a black man. I guess he’s confused on what happened in Iowa and many other states earlier this year.

People vote for candidates for many reasons. During the Iowa primaries, an 85-year old black woman was quoted in the Register declaring, “I’m voting for Obama no matter what. I want to live to see a black man run the White House.” A white female friend of mine recently made a similar comment about Hillary and living to see a woman running the US government. Another black friend said that he was for Obama because it “just sent the right message to the world.” None of these people are making a decision based on the issues. But I’m not sure they are necessarily racist or sexist. Are they?

Some people are so quick to call anything racist these days and an article like this just perpetuates the tactic.