Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Discriminations

Legal Commentary

: Discriminations

Walter Shapiro: Bad Mood, No Tense, Dubious Fact

The reliably liberal Walter Shapiro has an interesting article in Salon today on the race (and the role of race in the race) in Ohio. But I don?t want to discuss most of his evidence or argument now.

Instead, consider he says here:

A striking feature of the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll, which was released Friday, was that while McCain is winning the support of 90 percent of Republican voters, Obama is only picking up 82 percent of the Democrats. These differing levels of party loyalty ? which might (note the conditional tense) be attributed to Palin for the Republicans and Obama?s African-American heritage on the Democratic side ? partly explain why McCain leads 48 to 44 percent in the survey....

You might want to follow Shapiro?s advice here (silly you), but you?d have a hard time doing so since there is no ?conditional tense,? or even any relevant tense at all, to note. The form lurking deep within ?might be attributed? is, if anything, the subjunctive mood (?A verb is in the subjunctive mood when it expresses a condition which is doubtful or not factual....?)

Now that we?ve made Shapiro less tense and put him in the right mood, let?s consider his suggestion that ?Obama?s African-American heritage? may be costing him votes in Ohio. Really? Does Obama even have an ?African-American heritage??

Everyone knows by now that Obama was born in Hawaii (unless he was born in Indonesia, as some conspiracy theorists believe) of an African father and a white woman from Kansas. He was raised primarily in Hawaii by his white Kansas grandparents, who, he insists in his ads, taught him ?values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up.?

Obama did not become ?black? until his teenage years, or later, and that was by choice. He certainly is free to choose to identify himself as black (and others no doubt would even if he didn?t), but he?s not free to choose his ?heritage.?

Insofar as there are people who who will vote against him because he?s black, I suspect that?s not because of the color of his skin or his alleged ?African-American heritage? but largely because they?ve been persuaded over the years that ?black? is synonymous with race-preference supporting liberal Democrat. They suspect ? correctly, given Obama?s continuing support for race preferences ? that he will give preferential treatment to people like him, not them.

Full post as published by Discriminations on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).