Racial divisions are on display in the presidential sweepstakes

By Rekha Basu

Des Moines Register

A 21-year-old Latina approached the mic on the stage in a packed Des Moines, Iowa, auditorium where Hillary Clinton sat. It was the Brown and Black presidential forum, and Thalia Anguiano’s soft demeanor gave no hint of the hard-hitting question ahead.

Then the college student from Chicago politely asked Clinton to “tell us what the term white privilege means to you,” and to offer “an example from your life or career when you think you have benefited from it.”

Hefty applause and cheers followed, not out of disdain for a privileged white woman but out of appreciation for the acknowledgment of white privilege the question provided. Clinton responded with references to the advantages of her middle-class upbringing, which she used to attribute to luck.

Fifty-two years since the Civil Rights Act, and 48 years since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the issue of race seems to be cropping up with increasing frequency in a variety of contexts. Race still separates our communities and schools, even if that divide is now dictated not by law but by economics. There’s a racial angle to climate change, college admissions, prison growth, deportation, and rancor between the president and Congress. Anguiano, in a later interview, even spoke of “colorism” within minority communities like hers. “Everyone identifies as Latino, but if you have dark skin, you have less chances of getting a job,” said the brown-skinned young woman.

Light-skinned Latinos

She didn’t mention the two lighter-skinned Latinos, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, running for president on the Republican side. Cruz, who apparently sees no white privilege, accuses Clinton of political correctness for saying “Black lives matter.” On the other side, some Latinos took to Twitter to accuse Clinton of pandering to their communities by likening herself to their “abuela.” They compared the adversities their grandmothers faced to Clinton’s privileges.

These are testy times all around. Even the first black president isn’t immune to criticism for his policies toward minorities. President Barack Obama is under fire for deporting more immigrants than all previous presidents – and especially, of late, mothers and young children. Still, Cruz calls the president “an apologist for radical Islamic terrorism.”

Trump’s strategy

Every time Trump scapegoats a minority group, his numbers rise – whether that’s calling undocumented Latinos rapists, or pledging to bar all Muslims. So it can cost his Republican opponents to disagree, which Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich all did over his anti-Muslim stance. And after Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called on Trump (without using his name) not to “follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” conservative radio host Laura Ingraham called that an “insane, intimidating, demonizing and lame attempt to dismantle the growing populist movement in this country.” Ann Coulter tweeted that Trump should “deport Nikki Haley,” who is of Indian origin.

Lord Krishna! What’s going on here?

This rancor is apparently more than mild-mannered Ben Carson can take. At one point after a recent debate, after asking to be awoken when it was his turn, Carson exclaimed: “We have race wars, gender wars, income wars, religious wars, age wars. Everything you mention, we have people at each other’s throats. Where did that spirit come from in America? Our strength is our unity.”

Or did we ever really have it?

Certainly, police killings of unarmed black men have heightened political divisions, with Republicans frequently siding with police, and Democrats with minority communities. But it’s only new that they’re now captured on cell phones. All the Democratic candidates have denounced police racial profiling, but not the highest-polling Republicans. Trump declares police to be “the most mistreated people in this country.” And Cruz pledges to them, “I will have your back.”

Away from the partisan rancor, people of color who turned out for a lively Putting Families First forum in Iowa, organized by the progressive Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action Fund, shared their own anomalous situations. Board member Lori Young said being black and female has “influenced my socioeconomic status and my human experience oftentimes beyond my control.” Her sons, she said, have beaten the odds because they’re still alive at ages 30 and 24, are fully employed and have never been imprisoned

Unemployment

Rod Adams of Minneapolis, a young black college graduate, spoke of his six or seven years of unemployment or minimum wage jobs, and having to choose between eating and paying rent. He said black Minnesotans have four times the unemployment rate of whites. “Once you combine this atmosphere of desperation with the archaic form of policing, what you’ve created is a ticking time bomb,” Adams said. “These bombs are exploding in the form of uprisings in Ferguson, Baltimore and all over.”

So Monday’s Martin Luther King holiday came amid a mixed bag of progress and regress. The candidates most likely to succeed a black president include a woman, a Jew and two Latinos. But our cities are in turmoil. Communities of color struggle disproportionately from income inequality and incarceration. And we’re not even having the same conversations. Where some see white privilege, others see minorities and women getting ahead at their expense. That’s reflected in the popularity of unconventional candidates Trump and Sanders, who frame the national malaise in terms, respectively, of weakness or greed.

What would King think? If nothing else, he’d be encouraged by the new spirit of activism that has young people like Thalia Anguiano speaking their truths to people in power.

Rekha Basu is a columnist for the Des Moines Register.