Diversity is in danger when a presidential candidate's middle name can't be uttered nor a picture of him wearing traditional Somali clothes shown without these incidents being framed by Barack Obama as personal attacks.
The Obama campaign has been successful in large measure by working effectively to transcend race as an issue: He has no color; he is a candidate with ideas.
But the fact remains that he does have a color, he does have religion and he did travel to Kenya in 2006 to visit the land of his father. And he did wear a turban and a wrap-around garment when he visited Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya near the borders with Somalia and Ethiopia.
Yet these innocuous facts have been transformed by the Obama campaign and the media into opportunities to further attack Hillary Clinton, who has had nothing to do with "outing" Obama's well-known middle name nor the photograph from a trip Obama himself publicly promoted at the time.
The response from his campaign is a primal scream: "They're saying I'm African! They're saying I'm Muslim! I'm not! I'm American! I'm Christian!"
As if being African-American was something to hide. As if carrying the name Hussein was a shame.
Muslims have been pelted repeatedly over the years, victimized by hate crimes for the crimes committed by the hijackers who slammed planes into iconic American buildings, killing thousands. And now, in the middle of the most expensive Democratic campaign in history, carried out by one of the party's most brilliant and visionary politicians, comes the insidious suggestion that being Muslim is shameful, and that having Hussein as a middle name is something that should be hidden.
Whatever it takes to win?
Matt Drudge attributed the "leaked" photo to the Clinton campaign. In effect, a rumor- monger with little credibility fans the tensions between the Obama and Clinton campaigns. His cohorts in the mainstream media inflame the issue further by insisting that Clinton did not forcefully enough deny Drudge's claim. Maggie Williams, Clinton's campaign manager, responded this way: "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely."
Oddly enough, the Obama campaign acted as if it fears being rejected by a segment of the electorate that is so bigoted that it wouldn't vote for a non-Christian or one who wears, on occasion, something other than Western attire. Would bigots vote for him under any circumstance? At least in this country, where diversity is finally coming into the mainstream as a celebrated fact of life, Muslims and those whose name is Hussein—first, middle or last—aren't the only ones insulted by this discouraging display of paranoia politics.
It appears that Obama and his supporters were upset because they know that being Muslim is a bad thing in the United States. The fact remains that to get to the White House, Obama has appealed to a cross-section of the electorate by minimizing race and religion as issues by which candidates should be judged.
Many of us kept hoping that Obama would respond to the distorted hype about his clothes and name by saying forcefully that yes, indeed, he put on the traditional garb—and with pride. That his middle name is Hussein because his mother loved it as much as his first name. And that being anything but Anglo isn't a bad thing.
He should have said that this campaign is also about diversity and the key role it has in building a more perfect union.
Natalia Muñoz is editor of La Prensa of Western Massachusetts (www.LaPrensaMa.com).
