The Role of Hope, Fear and Race in the Election of the President

by CODY LYON
FULL TEXT  at POLITICAL CORTEX
    On the sunny, crisp and final Monday of October 2008, three friends met at around 1 p.m.,  in Downtown Manhattan's financial district for lunch.
    The three then headed to a pub located on a narrow cobblestone street deep within the cavernous patch of land where buildings inspired by finance touch the sky.
    Inside, dim light, drab wood tables  and a line of customers at a steam table that included Turkey and cranberry sauce, Cajun Strip Steak, vegetables and crusted macaroni and Cheese.
    Sitting at the tables were business attired patrons on lunch breaks.  
    Being that it was a few days before Halloween, fake spider webs coated the ceiling.
     And, since it was only eight days before a national election, much of the soft but steady conversation filling the room was punctuated by Obama, Palin and McCain and Biden.
    After the three settled into one of the the worn wooden booths, they too joined the conversation between bites of the hearty food and syrupy flat soda.
    Despite polls predicting otherwise, one of the three raised doubts about a Democratic win, a hope they all said they subscribed to.
    The doubter worried that while the potential election of the African American candidate had erased much of the fact that racism still plays an active role in American politics.
    At that point, one of the three teased the doubter about his Southern upbringing, while the other, a New York native laughed but with caution, chimed in, saying what goes on behind the curtain of a voting booth, often stays behind the curtain.
    The doubter kept saying that this is America, a place where hypocrisy and secrets often reveal themselves in subtle fashions.  He charged that America was still a place where inequity could be measured along racial and class lines and that it was on full display in policy and even in the most mundane activities of day to day life.  
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