By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com
Color Blind
Last night I was listening to NPR while I was driving along, and they had a thing on about Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for President of the United States, way back in 1972. Listening to recordings of Chisholm speak, I was powerfully struck by her passion, the clear way in which she presented her points, the tenacity with which she went after the brass ring, and the courage with which she put herself out there as a candidate for the presidency as a woman and an African American, all those years ago.
But what particularly struck me was her saying, in an interview, that she didn’t believe that her race was really such a big issue in 1972, that surely we’d come far enough along as a country by that point that race didn’t matter. I don’t know if the programmers at NPR intended the contrast, but on the program immediately following Chisholm, they were in Logan, West Virginia, talking to voters in that predominantly Democratic town about whether they were voting for Obama or McCain, and while there were quite a few smart-sounding folks who were talking about issues, there were also the requisite racists talking about “the coloreds” and even one guy sounding off about how black people don’t have “what it takes” to lead the country. Oy.
In 1972, Shirley Chisholm believed race was no longer an issue in a race for the presidency. And here we are in 2008, with Obama’s race still very much an issue for a lot of voters. I’m proud of the Democratic party. When it got down to the convention, we had a woman and a black man competing for their party’s nomination. It was a stirring, historic moment, but the fight’s not over yet. We’ve got a long way to go.
But I hope that Shirley Chisholm, wherever she is in the afterlife, saw the massive crowd in St. Louis gathering to hear their next president speak, and smiled.