Alex Fiore
Persuasive Writing
Professor Varner
24 September 2008
Reaction Paper #2
This upcoming presidential election is a no-brainer in my opinion. Barack Obama’s plans have all the necessary ingredients to turn this nation around, boost our economy, lower unemployment, and get us out of debt. On the other hand, John McCain, who has agreed with President Bush’s actions 95% of the time, would essentially be George W. Bush’s third term. So why is it that, according to polls, this election could be as close as the 2000 election? Well, according to the recently released AP-Yahoo News poll, Obama's race could cost him 6 percentage points. The poll of white Democrats and Independents also found that one-third of them harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them “lazy,” “violent,” and responsible for their own troubles. In this nation of white supremacy, and apparently ignorance, we not only need to change the notion of black inferiority, but also the negative downward direction that our country has been headed toward since Clinton left office.
One argument, as ridiculous as it sounds, that has been brought up about Obama’s race in the election is that Obama’s power in office will expand to more African Americans, and in turn, will increase black supremacy. But, on the other hand, why that is a bad thing? African American leaders in history have demonstrated and encouraged the spread of equal civil rights to all races. If an African American leader is elected, then these civil rights issues can only be easier to work out. A scholarly work by Stokely Carmichael argues white supremacy’s origin is power in numbers, and therefore equal supremacy can be reached by distributing power evenly between whites and blacks. However, for some reason or another, this picture of a multicolored world is a scary one to some people.
It is these people that have to focus more on the facts and statistics on paper. Currently the American economy is under one of the largest unemployment rates since the painful 1982 recession. Since the turn of the millennium under President Bush the economy has only produced 3.7 million new jobs since 2001. This number does not even come close to 17.6 million new jobs that were generated in Clinton’s term preceding Bush. Another staggering mark is the unemployment rate under President Bush, which has now reached 6.1%. George Bush’s economic philosophy, that has cost the American economy 605,000 jobs, is almost completely agreed with by the current Republican candidate, John McCain. Rather smugly I entered a similar statement into the unemployment page on Wikipedia. Although this may not be very credible or anything more than a perceived hypothesis, it would still be eye opening for someone to see that on a Wikipedia page when the name of any other presidential candidate cannot be found anywhere else on the page.
This exercise brings up a rather dynamic question. Are people still willing to elect the same philosophy we had the past eight years because the other candidate is of African American descent? This question not only makes one look at race in a different way, but also makes them look at themselves and distinguish if they dare to be open-minded and break away from your traditional white male president. Sure, the other side also breaks away from tradition with a female Vice President, but this election should not be about who the candidates are physically. It sure instead be about whom they are theoretically, what they stand for, and how they can change the state of this country.