THE RACE CARD

I went to grad school at Temple University, which is nestled among the streets of a black ghetto. On one of those streets - it must have been about '65 - I was appealed to for help by a middle-aged white woman and her college-age son, both with East European accents. Their car's engine worked, but when the man tried to back up it wouldn't move.

The woman complained bitterly several times that "the lazy neegers" all about wouldn't help them. In view of what happened, I am sure they never requested help till they saw a white person.

While we were scratching our heads, a skinny, poorly-dressed but jaunty middle-aged black guy with a too-small hat happened along. He noticed our bafflement. He also noticed what we hadn't - that the front bumper of the pair's car was interlocked with the rear bumper of the car ahead of it. So he and I stood on the front bumper while the young man backed clear.

Free at last! The pair thanked me profusely while the black man was sauntering off. I loudly called thanks after him, but they didn't pick up on it. In defiance of the evidence, they thought I saved them while "the lazy neegers" shunned them in their plight.

Things are different now on the racial front, as we all know. But that's no thanks to the Republican party. Under the leadership of Senator Robert Taft, the erstwhile party of Lincoln made a conscious decision to induce the segregationist South to switch parties and join it. So it stayed aloof from the work of civil rights and social justice, and it cashed in on racial backlash. Nixon's "Southern strategy" carried on that policy. The message to the white working class was, "Blacks and whites are, as such, in competition."

That view is needless and irrational, on a par with that long-ago pair's untruthful division of their world into "lazy" blacks and "helpful" whites.

The fancier, more erudite conservatives like to prate about Edmund Burke and the importance of history. But conservatives are historically short-sighted. Writing off the black vote for the segregationist vote may have seemed shrewd in 1950, but take a look today at the number of segregationists compared to the number of blacks. What the Republicans opted for was not only wicked but dumb.

Conservatives say that success makes us on the left feel guilty and that that is why we care about blacks and the poor and the helpless. On the contrary, we like the feel of success. So naturally we want it to be shared in by everyone, including those who have not had our advantages. Those who cannot understand that have something wrong with them.

Of late there have been attempts by right-wing propagandists to make liberals appear racist. Anyone on the left who practices racism is being inconsistent, because the left is defined by its belief in equality. It is the right that thinks humanity can advance only when some are enslaved or segregated or exterminated or degraded or held down.

To conservatives, if I win that means you have to lose. The truth is that we both win when they lose.