The President and Race

The upcoming election has me amazed. I sat through both conventions, for the most part, and honestly, though I was listening for it, I didn't hear anything of substance at all in the Republican convention. Yet the Republicans, particularly Palin, are becoming more and more popular, even though there has been much news about all the things in Palin's background that contradict her assertions--the Bridge to Nowhere stuff, information about how Palin, as mayor of a small Alaska town, made rape victims pay for their own rape kids... no one seems to hear it or to care.
I cannot help but think, as a former denizen of a largely black city that was so polarized white people couldn't use the majority of the public transportation going through certain parts of the city, that race has something, more than just a little to do with this, given that Obama is the nominee this year for the Dems.
After my summer in the Atlanta area and the time I spent living in VA and speaking to my husband's relatives in a small time in VA, I know that race is a much bigger issue for many people than it seems to be out here in CA, where race is no big deal among most. Yet even here, if one looks at who is out in the fields, picking fruit and vegetables, who is doing the menial work, one sees that it's people of color. And it was only in the 70s that it became legal for people of mixed race to marry.
Race is definitely the proverbial elephant in the refridgerator. And we can't pretend it isn't there because its footprints are in the cheesecake. At a time when the stock market is tanking, climate change is causing enormous storms, and the whole world seems generally to be going to hell, the Republicans seem to be capable of pulling off this election, even with clearly inferior candidates, who say nothing at all.