vinemaple

Minorities await Dr. Dean's house call:

Howard Dean blitzed into Seattle the other day talking about how he was "a uniter not a divider" -- about how he believed in the pluralistic dream articulated by Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago this week.

An energizing message for the chanting, cheering throng of 10,000 in Westlake Center Sunday night? You bet.

Problem was Dean was preaching to a crowd of mostly white, mostly liberal, mostly converted voters from the People's Republic of the Emerald City.

The city's rainbow -- indeed our community's rich ethnic diversity -- was nowhere in sight, nowhere to hear this dreamer's message up close.

A scan of the crowd showed sprinkles of minorities, suggesting Dean and the Dems have their work cut out for them if they want to make inroads with crucial blocs of untapped voters, especially young blacks and Hispanics.

"I hear Dean is Chinese. Is he?" a young African American man asked me before Dean, a physician and former governor of Vermont, appeared on stage.

Talk about a disconnect.

There's not necessarily anything wrong with a crowd that's mostly white. Obviously, if you saw an NBA team with all white players, you would have to figure there was some racism behind that. On the other hand, you won't see many black people at an Oscar Peterson show, not because they're not welcome (Oscar Peterson is an elderly jazz musician, and black), but because his music hasn't appealed to black audiences for about forty years.

However, good liberals, myself included, would feel a whole lot better to see a bunch of racial minorities in the crowd, to prove that we're not racist. But what's Dean supposed to do about that? His positions are more in line with the average black American than white. Except for his support for gay rights, Dean's civil rights positions are pretty much what you would expect from the NAACP. He was against the war with Iraq, which blacks favored less than whites, he's for finding ways to cover the uninsured, which would help poorer people, he's for affirmative action, and would repeal the Bush tax cuts if elected. Short of advocating reparations for slavery, and not supporting gay rights, no further policy stances he could take would attract the attention of black voters.

What does Jamieson want Dean to do? The closest he comes to advice is to mock a Dean supporter:

One woman demanded: "For the barbecue, is there a vegetarian or vegan option? Or is it just carnivorous?"

Is Jamieson suggesting Dean should court black voters with meat?