Which Party Reflects My America?

Published 3:06 pm Thursday, October 4, 2012

Editor, The Herald:

When I watched the two conventions recently I was stunned by the difference in the very appearance of each audience: the Republican National Convention was markedly male, white and gray-haired. As the camera panned the Tampa audience I saw a sea of white faces.

Of course, the speakers included representatives of each voting block: Artur Davis, the most widely touted African-American speaker at the Republican National Convention is a man best known on the national stage for his passionate support of President Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

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Mia Love came as a 3-in-1 winner in self-contained diversity: African American, female, Mormon and Mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah.

Of the two black male House GOP freshmen, one, Tim Scott of South Carolina, has already spoken; Ann Romney white female; Condoleezza Rice Rice, an incomparable black woman with too many firsts to list here; Nikki Haley, East Indian Governor of South Carolina; and Senator Marco Rubio from Florida whose parents fled Cuba during the dictatorship of Batista. Apparently white, male speakers for Congress had less than one in ten chance of even being invited to the convention. But the audience was predominantly white.

From the first night of the Democratic National Convention through the last hurrah for President Obama, I saw America represented in the audience and in ordinary men and women who walked courageously across that big stage to speak as a mother, a wounded veteran and a college law student. This is the America I have seen in my classrooms in Maryland and Virginia. The America I see at the Farmville Wal-Mart and in front of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. waiting for seven hours with thousands to respect the body of Rosa Parks or marching as One Nation on the Mall October 2, 2010. My America is multi-cultured, many shaded; male and female, earnest, caring and hopeful.

On “Morning Joe” the day after the DNC ended, Joe Scarborough spoke specifically to this discrepancy. He opined that scientifically sound sampling actually counted that the people of color in view during the RNC: they amounted to a total of 48!

I am proud to support a party that applauds our diversity, our mixture of needs and our fervent desire to include all Americans in the rebuilding of America. I am grateful to support President Barack Obama, the candidate of all Americans.

Paddy Kernisky

Charlotte County