The Race Card: Still Playable?

The Los Angeles Times suggests that Obama’s election has changed the politics of race. It’s evidence is that the attempt to play the race card with the U.S. Senate’s failure to seat Roland Burris as Obama’s replacement has sputtered. This action isn’t about race but the taint attached to anyone appointed by Rod Blagojevich, Governor of Illinois.

That has a non-race sound to it, until you consider that without Obama, there’s no African-American in the Senate. Rep. Bobby Rush, a blunt race card player, says the failure to seat Burris proves the Senate is “the last bastion of plantation politics.”

That provides a segue to an article in Slate Magazine about the dearth of black college football coaches: six of 119 in the NCAA’s top division. Slate focuses on Charles Barkley’s accusation that Auburn’s explanation for its recent selection of the white Gene Chizik over the black Turner Gill as the ”best fit” is code for race, particularly given Chizik’s losing record at Iowa State and Gill’s turnaround of the program at Buffalo.

Slate notes that college football coaches must schmooze alums and boosters who give to a program that’s a huge moneymaker, and white coaches may well be a better fit for raising money from largely white donors, a time-worn argument found to be unlawful in other settings. And then the Rush-like opinion: ”A sport that’s dominated by white coaches and black athletes — white overseers giving orders to young black bucks who do the physical work — can bear an uncomfortable resemblance to a plantation.”

The race card is in play with a vengeance. I’m guessing it will be as long as institutions have a disproportionate number of white faces. Playing it can still work, as it now appears that Senate Democrats have decided to seat Burris.