Patricia Harrelson

I’m getting tired of receiving political email, usually messages that have been forwarded hundreds of times. I’m sick of reading blog posts that slander or at least underline the foibles of McCain and Palin. But yesterday I got an email message–it was another forward– that brought me up short and made me think about perspective and point of view.

Early on as writers, we learn to consider the importance and relevance of point of view in writing. Here are segments of the email message that made me shiver, that frightened me and forced me to recognize how deeply entrenched our country is in a racist point of view.

What if things were switched around? Consider the following:

What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if McCain had only married once and Obama was a divorcee?

What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?

What if Cindy McCain had graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)

Why aren’t people talking about John Sydney McCain if they are saying Barack Hussein Obama?

What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing three planes?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes, and minimizes the positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

Education isn’t everything, but I think it should be a part of one’s perspective when evaluating candidates for the most important position in the country. Consider the disparate educational backgrounds of the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates:

Barack Obama:
Columbia University – B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard – Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Joseph Biden:
University of Delaware – B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law – Juris Doctor (J.D.)

John McCain:
United States Naval Academy – Class rank: 894 of 899

Sarah Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University – 1 semester
North Idaho College – 2 semesters – general study
University of Idaho – 3 semesters – B.A. in Journalism

There is no minimizing the power of point of view when one considers how much harder a bi-racial man has to work to reach the same heights as a white man or a white woman.