South Carolina’s Race Lessons
By Emil Guillermo

In Election 2000, South Carolina may be the primary where Asian Americans may want to use their yellow markers.

Last week, South Carolina had its turn. With the help of the Christian right, the flagging campaign of George W. Bush has been resurrected.

Time to forget South Carolina?

Not on your life.

The lobbyists who had bet hard and early on G.W. certainly won’t forget. Their guy was spending money faster than an Internet startup. The $70 million dollar candidate was down to a lousy $20 million. Then the vote came, and you can imagine the worried backers looking skyward, and exalting, “Hallelujah.”

But for those of us in other parts of the country, eavesdropping on the process, little ole’ South Carolina gave us an unusually candid look at the GOP candidates, especially when it came to their reactions to the traditional hot-button issues of race.

They were silent.

The issues were there. Race just didn’t seem to matter to anyone: not to the voters of South Carolina, where 97 percent were white.

And not to the candidates.

It should have.

Race has certainly come up with the Democrats. Considering that ethnic minorities are traditional Democratic constituencies, Gore and Bradley have not forgotten the importance of the issue. Why else would Gore and Bradley debate each other in a raucous exchange at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem?

But the Republicans? When race came up in South Carolina, the candidates acted like Southerners.

Neither Bush nor McCain seemed willing to show any real leadership. If that’s the South Carolinian equivalent of “when in Rome act as the Romans,” it was awfully polite of them.

But what about the rest of us in the other 49 states? What message does it send to us?

The Confederate flag issue was first to come up. Should such a strong symbol of racial oppression continue to wave from the Statehouse dome?

Bush and McCain were in agreement. Neither gave a strong or passionate statement on the Confederate flag. Not wanting to insult the South Carolinian electorate, they both said that it was up to the people of the state. But isn’t that just passing the buck?

The issue isn’t going away. Last Saturday, the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, announced in Washington, D.C., that its economic boycott will continue against South Carolina.

Then came Bob Jones University, the ultra-right religious college that lost its tax-exempt status because of a policy that bans interracial dating on campus. Bush went to speak there to show just how right wing he was. When questioned about his appearance, he seemed puzzled that anyone could equate his presence at the college as a tacit endorsement of its discriminatory policy.

Bush acknowledged he wouldn’t attend a Klan rally, or a meeting of a hate group. But Bush said these Bob Jones folks weren’t a hate group, just a religious group, albeit, a group that also believes that Catholics and Mormons are in bed with Satan. There was no strong denunciation from Bush of the practices at Bob Jones U.

John McCain was a little better. He didn’t go to Bob Jones U.

Alan Keyes was even better. He was scheduled to go to Bob Jones U., but after the Bush flap he didn’t. Then, he turned around and scolded the university during the televised debate just prior to the primary. That was the debate where the two main candidates were after each other like schoolboys, and Keyes seemed above the fray and more reasonable than normal. But it sure didn’t help him at the ballot box.

The latest example took the prize, however. It was a personal remark that came up just days before the primary this past week. McCain on his “Straight Talk Express” was defending his straight talk. In talking to reporters, McCain proudly defended using the term “gook” to describe his North Vietnamese torturers during the Vietnam War.

“I’ll call, right now, my interrogator that tortured me and my friends a ‘gook.’ OK, and you can quote me,” he told reporters.

Of course he could have called them, cruel, evil, brutal, inhuman rat bastards, and that would have been fine. But to insist on using the word gook? Is this like the folks who want the Confederate flag raised in homage to historically accurate hate speech?

It all plays in South Carolina, where some people no doubt wondered, “What’s wrong with gook? The spelling?”

But imagine how this will play in the Asian American strongholds in California, where gook is the all-encompassing derogatory phrase for the entire Asian American community? To Asian Americans, gook is as bad as nigger. Funny how you didn’t hear McCain toss around that phrase willy-nilly in Detroit.

But to Asian Americans, somehow McCain feels compelled not to be diplomatic, but to fight back, be defensive and pull out his P.O.W. card. His tormentors were gooks. As McCain told reporters: “Gook is the kindest description I can give them, the most printable.”

So we must thank our South Carolinian friends for the glimpses of character and humanity their good state elicited from the GOP candidates.

Highlight it in yellow.

As the campaign moves to more diverse areas, that look and feel more like our country, and where race still means something, candidates had better be ready to explain their lapses in South Carolina. They’ll have to if they want our votes in their quest to be the leader of a great, all-inclusive America.