{"id":19878,"date":"2012-01-16T03:40:15","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T03:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=19878"},"modified":"2015-11-13T01:36:49","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T01:36:49","slug":"what%e2%80%99s-race-got-to-do-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=19878","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Race Got to Do With It?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/01\/14\/whats-race-got-to-do-with-it\/\" target=\"_blank\">What\u2019s Race Got to Do With It?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times<\/a><br \/>\n2012-01-14<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lee Seigel<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mitt_Romney\" target=\"_blank\">Mitt Romney<\/a> may not have officially clinched the Republican nomination, but his victory has never really been in doubt. Nor has his viability in November: the most fanatical Tea Partiers are not about to withhold their votes and risk allowing <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">President Obama<\/a> to be re-elected.<\/p>\n<p>Pundits have already begun the endless debate over whether Mr. Romney\u2019s wealth and religion are hindrances or assets. But there has yet to be any discussion over the one quality that has subtly fueled his candidacy thus far and could well put him over the top in the fall: his race. The simple, impolitely stated fact is that Mitt Romney is the whitest white man to run for president in recent memory.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I\u2019m not talking about a strict count of melanin density. I\u2019m referring to the countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways he telegraphs to a certain type of voter that he is the cultural alternative to America\u2019s first black president. It is a whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;In this way, whether he means to or not, Mr. Romney connects with a central evangelic fantasy: that the Barack Obama years, far from being the way forward, are in fact a historical aberration, a tear in the white space-time continuum. And let\u2019s be clear: Mr. Obama\u2019s election was not destiny, but a fluke.<\/p>\n<p>Despite a general revulsion against <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_W._Bush\" target=\"_blank\">George W. Bush<\/a> and his policies, despite <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_McCain\" target=\"_blank\">John McCain\u2019s<\/a> lack of ideas and his remoteness from contemporary American problems, the Republican ticket was ahead of Mr. Obama by several points in September 2008. Then came the fall: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lehman_Brothers\" target=\"_blank\">Lehman Brothers<\/a>, the stock-market plunge and skyrocketing unemployment (not to mention Sarah Palin).<\/p>\n<p>By the iron law of elections, the country threw the bums out and rejected anyone even remotely tied to them. The result? America\u2019s first black president&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire opinion piece <a href=\"http:\/\/campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/01\/14\/whats-race-got-to-do-with-it\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s Race Got to Do With It? The New York Times 2012-01-14 Lee Seigel Mitt Romney may not have officially clinched the Republican nomination, but his victory has never really been in doubt. Nor has his viability in November: the most fanatical Tea Partiers are not about to withhold their votes and risk allowing President [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,26,20],"tags":[9239,9240],"class_list":["post-19878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-lee-seigel","tag-mitt-romney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43935,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19878\/revisions\/43935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}