Mamalicious!

I might have to start tuning in again…

My latest column, The Princess Problem: “There’s More Than One Way of Being Pretty”, is up over at AntiRacistParent.  Toot-toot.

Dear Mini-Me,

The tulips, delivered to my front door yesterday, were indeed wonderful.  Bright, fresh, and lovely.

The mini mylar balloon was cute.

The chocolates, which you and your little sister ate the majority of helped me eat, were heavenly.

But this afternoon, you topped yourself when you came bounding into my bedroom with a large collection of Dilbert comic strips published in 1996, two years before you were born.  And you read your favorites to me.  And you got them.  You really got them.

You just don’t know how very glad you made this old sarcastic/nerd-girl/bookish mama-heart of mine.  You just don’t know.

In the words of Dilbert’s boss: “My proactive leadership must be working.”

Praise be.

Growing up, I was one of those girls who hated gym class. One of those girls who the boys never wanted on their team during games because my fellow gym-haters and I would stand around gossiping, determined not to break a sweat in 90-plus degree Florida heat, reciting the words to “The Real Roxanne” until we had them all memorized–instead of, oh, I don’t know, chasing the softballs that came our way in the outfield, or hitting the volleyball over the net?

A big reason that I hated gym class was because I was chronically unfit and overweight. Nary a Presidential Physical Fitness Test did I pass during my entire school career, not the overall test, nor any of the sub-tests.

In adulthood, I remained generally unfit and sedentary–the occasional gym membership (which eventually went to waste) notwithstanding. When I became pregnant with my oldest child in 1998, I began my current mostly healthy, whole, organic way of eating, but exercise continued to be something I did in spurts.

In 2003, I lost nearly 40 pounds through a combination of food-related lifestyle changes and step aerobics at home about 5 times a week.

In 2005, I lost my mother to breast cancer. That same year, my grandmother died of colon cancer, and my father died of a massive stroke. Among the many effects these tragedies had on me were these: 1) I gained back about half of the weight I’d lost, due to grief and stress, and 2) I took to heart the fact that weight loss could reduce my risk of getting breast cancer.

So, I resolved to get healthier. I tried to do it the way I had before, but to no avail. So I joined a gym (again), and considered getting a personal trainer. It seemed like such an indulgence; ladies who lunch get personal trainers, right? But then I looked at it another way: Clearly, trying to do this by myself wasn’t working. I didn’t like going to the gym, and could think of at least 50 things I would rather be doing. I had the desire to get fit, but lacked the basic motivation to see it through–if that makes any sense.

Then there was the question of money. Personal training isn’t cheap. But just as I justify and make adjustments for the short-term expense of whole and organic foods by considering the long-term savings in health care costs–I looked at personal training the same way. The money I spend on any number of “wants” (as opposed to needs) could cover the cost. For example, I work from home and don’t require a whole wardrobe of business attire, so what would it matter if I didn’t buy new clothes unless I absolutely needed to for a few years? (Trivia: Old Navy jeans will rip at about the 2 1/2 year mark.)

Books can be bought for as little as pennies on Amazon.

I’ve never been into gadgets. I was perfectly happy with cassette tapes and VHS. I’ve been laughed at because I have had the same “regular”-sized TV for nearly a decade, and it’s the only TV in the entire house. I own an iPod Nano only because my family gave it to me for Christmas.

Nothing is more important than my health. If I don’t put my health first, then I risk not being around to enjoy all the Stuff anyway. Kind of a dark way of looking at things, but it’s the truth. So, I decided to sign up for personal training.

To date, I have had four trainers in about 18 months. But not because I’m a hard case! I had only two sessions with the first trainer before he left to go back to college. I had the next trainer for many months; I really liked her, but she had a lot of personal problems, and eventually quit her job at the gym. The third trainer, Jamie (not her real name) reminded me of a UCONN basketball player–lean, fit, sunny disposition, blond ponytail…collegiate. She worked me harder than the two previous trainers, but she too left the gym after a few months of training me when her boyfriend got a new position out of state.

During this time, I felt I became stronger, but I did not lose weight or become leaner/more muscular. I was hopeful with Jamie; she was great at motivating me. I thought I would begin to see progress in time, but then she announced her pending departure. “But your new trainer is great,” she told me. She then pointed to a tall, fit Latino man running on a treadmill. He was sweating, but he made the run look effortless. “That’s Don [not his real name]. He’s in the [military branch] reserves. A great guy.”

“Great,” I said. “He looks hardcore.”

“He is,” Jamie said. “And he’ll be good for you.”

A month later, I said good-bye to Jamie, and had my first session with Don. He wanted to spend half the session talking so that he could get to know me and design a program that fit my needs and my personality. I knew that Jamie had left detailed notes of everything we’d done, but it seemed that Don wanted to start from scratch.

First, we chit-chatted about ourselves. Turns out, he’s not only in the reserves (currently non-deployable for at least the next four years–after my luck with trainers, I had to ask!), he’s training to be an officer, and he’s an ex-cop who is also a freelance writer for cop training-related magazines. For himself, he writes short stories and is working on a novel. Oh, and he’s working on his degree in English Literature at a local university.

!!!!!!!!!!

He was perfect for me. We talked about books and writers we liked, and I started to be lulled into what I have since realized was a false sense of “hey, maybe he won’t be so hardcore.”

Once Don was clear about my personal workout style (non-existent) and sports I like to play (racquetball), he told me how we would proceed. I cut him off to interject that earlier that morning, I had taken a zumba class, so maybe he might want to go easy on me. He laughed. “You forget that I’m Latino. That’s like saying you went for a walk in the park this morning!”

I tried to convince him that for uncoordinated me, zumba was no walk in the park. “Well, since we’re dabbling in stereotypes,” he said, “I find that hard to believe.”

“Nope,” I said, “I do not possess the black-girl-natural-dancer gene.”

We got up and got started. Push ups first. On my toes. I told him that I’d never done those. His reply: “First time for everything.” I did them! Then I did twice as many on my knees.

“Good,” Don said. “Our goal is for you to double the amount of each of those.”

We did a few other things here and there, but what stands out is what I did to amaze myself. I jogged on the treadmill. I hate jogging. I hate treadmills. I’ve never lasted for more than a few minutes. This time, however, I jogged a mile in just over 14 minutes. According to Don, some of the women he knows who are training to be officers can barely do a mile in under 20 minutes.

“We’re going to get you to 7 minutes.”

And you know what? At that moment, I believed it was possible.

Unlike my previous trainers, Don didn’t just plan to isolate the areas I said I wanted to improv, abs and arms, and simply have me do different weight lifting and ab exercises. He planned to work my whole body to improve my metabolism, burn fat, and build lean muscle. I hadn’t done cardio with the other trainers. So I was a bit nervous, but still optimistic.

So fast forward to today, our first full session. My instructions from Don were to show up a little early, jog my mile and then be prepared to hit once our session started. “It’s going to be intense,” he warned me.

Guess who jogged the mile in a little over 13 minutes. Me!

I bounded down the steps to Don’s office and made my big announcement.

“Okay,” he said, “Let’s go back up there and hit it again.”

Say what?

Guess who went back up there and jogged another mile in under 12 minutes. Me! After that, I jogged another half mile in 6 minutes.

As I ran, Don broke down the science between the different speed intervals he was setting (1/8 of a mile at a lower speed, another 1/8 at a higher speed, then back to the lower speed, and so on), and the overall science behind how he planned to train me and the benefits to my body.

Oh, and I needed to get actual running shoes. Note to self.

After getting a quick drink of water, we hit the weight machines. About 7 different pieces of equipment, 15 reps per machine, no breaks in between. Don explained how too many people mistakenly lift like bodybuilders when what they really want to do is lose weight.

After the weights, we ran–ran!–up two flights of stairs to the basketball court. He showed me how to do this set of sprints that would eventually have me running the length of the court. Adrenaline pumping and feeling invincible, I set off. About halfway through…I started breathing really hard…and then wheezing. I do not have asthma. I had to stop.

We figured that the wheezing was attributable to my never having worked so hard, how fatigued my body already was, and the fact that we went from the warm downstairs, to the really, really cool air upstairs.

(Needless to say, I’m going to talk to my doctor about it when I go on Monday for an unrelated check up.)

I rested a bit, and then Don asked if I wanted to try the sprints again, at a slower pace, or if I wanted to go back upstairs to do ab work. I opted to try again. This time, I did it, with no breathing problems. I even ran the last two, longest sprints, at top speed (well, top speed for me).

Final stop: Abs. First, 25 regular crunches. Then, holding that 25th crunch, I did 25 more in that position. Then, still holding that position, I did 25 bicycle crunches, cycling my legs, elbows to opposite knees, as I crunched.

I did this 3 times in rapid succession–stopping to beg for mercy only 3 times for a few seconds. No mercy was granted. I did 225 crunches.

Then I was dismissed.

Not sure I’ll be able to walk tomorrow, but right now, I’m walking on air. Tired, but floating.

My relationship with my late mother was a loving but rocky one. Not long ago, when I drafted a tribute to my grandmother, the wonderful editor who guided me through the revision of that essay pointed out major holes in the piece. These holes represented places where I hesitated to write anything remotely negative about my mother in the recounting of my childhood. I don’t know how much of it is a black thing or a Southern thing or a Christian thing, or if it’s just a daughter thing, but speaking ill of one’s mother (particular one’s deceased mother) seems to be nothing short of heresy– unless she did something like beat you with wire hangers when you were a kid.

(Aside: Something about that Joan Crawford-wire-hanger-beating never rang true to me. I’ve wondered if Christina Crawford may have taken creative license and invented the wire hanger incident because she feared people reacting to the non-physical abuse as no big deal. Notice how the wire hanger incident remains in the popular imagination, a shorthand for physical child abuse. And yet we hear far less, if anything at all, about Crawford’s overall cruelty, manipulation, and emotional abuse. This is not to disparage Christina Crawford, nor to cast doubt on abuse allegations in general. My commentary is not about Christina Crawford’s credibility; it’s about how, when it comes to mothers–rich, white ones, especially–our culture is loathe to picture them as anything but perfectly nurturing. (Unless said mother is Britney Spears, in which case her inadequacies as a mother are writ large because they can sell magazines.) The flip side of this adoration is that when mothers act like monsters, as a society we are louder in our calls for punishment and justice than when fathers are the culprits. “How could a MOTHER do such a thing?” We expect more of mothers, so we punish them more harshly when they fail.)

Back to the holes in my grandmother essay…By leaving out less-than-saintly details about my mother, I was not giving my grandmother her full due. She filled in gaps that my mother could not. In order to pay tribute to my grandmother for filling those gaps, I had to acknowledge my mother’s imperfections. It’s not that my mother was negligent–nothing could have been further from the truth. In simplest terms, she was very overprotective–but even writing that felt like a major betrayal.

I try to imagine how I would feel on the other side of the mother-daughter equation. What if my daughters wrote about my shortcomings in a national magazine? Would I yield to their right to expression, and respect their recollections? Would I offer acceptance of their freedom to tell their stories? If so, would this acceptance be of the grudging variety, or would I have a thicker-skin?

So I read with interest a recent article from The Times (of London)–”The Day Feminist Icon Alice Walker Resigned as My Mother”–about writer Rebecca Walker’s estrangement from her mother, Alice Walker. Having read and appreciated books by both women (and crossed paths with Rebecca once at Yale; she was a year ahead of me), I have mixed thoughts about the whole matter.

Further coloring my mixed viewpoint is the fact that of course I identify with both women: I am a writer, a mother, and a daughter. On the one hand, I feel a writer should be free to air her family’s dirty laundry, free to tell her story, her truth. On the other hand, intent matters. Airing dirty laundry to exact vengeance, embarrass, or otherwise hurt a family member should not be shrouded in the protective cloak of “I’m telling my truth.”

I can’t claim to know Rebecca Walker’s motives, but it’s a zero-sum game. If her version of events (chronicled in the artice and in her two memoirs) is to be believed, what a horrible light this casts on her mother. But, if Rebecca is not being honest, or if her intent is to wound her mother or capitalize on her mother’s celebrity, then Alice Walker’s iconography remains unblemished–and it’s Rebecca who’s standing beneath the bad lighting.

The Times article (and the comments which follow) raises many issues. Among them:

–the question of airing dirty laundry–heresy or right?
–accusations of Rebecca Walker “whining” and “milking” her mother’s celebrity and her painful childhood to gain celebrity of her own

–accusations of Alice Walker’s narcissism

–the irony of feminists (or anyone who subscribes dogmatically to any ideology) trying to save the world, but neglecting their own backyard (families, personal relationships)

There are three sides to every story, but on this one I’m inclined to lean toward the daughter’s telling. Perhaps because it will be many years before my girls can take to the pages of a magazine and tell the truth about me? Maybe then I will identify more with the elder Walker. For now, I empathize with what I presume is Rebecca’s struggle–telling her story at such a high, personal cost.

…you might want to go easy on calling other folk “elitist.”

In my personal dictionary, wealth and elitism go hand in hand. By virtue of being rich, you automatically isolate yourself from HAVING to experience the struggles that the less-well-off must face. You automatically have more personal, professional, economic, and social choices and freedoms, and as such, you are part of an exclusive, privileged, minority. Elitism is not to be confused with being “stuck up”, “unconcerned,” and “out of touch” which are states of mind which can accompany elitism, but not always. I think people who are among the elite can also be down to earth and socially-conscious, if they make an effort to be.

When Hillary Clinton accuses Obama of elitism, what she’s really saying is that he’s unconcerned with “regular folk.” Given that she has consistently and unapologetically shown that her personal concerns, pride, and ambitions trump all else–to hell with regular folk, the future of the Democratic Party, and the will of the people–I don’t know how she fixes her mouth to claim someone else is unconcerned. How does she walk with ovaries that large???

So last night, a gazillion years after the fad first surfaced, I gave karaoke a shot.

Yesterday afternoon, Tech Boo and I decided to throw a karaoke party at his place during early summer while his mom is in town. Grown-ups only, soul food, drinks…a good old-fashioned house party. We wrote the evite in our heads, debated the merits of Popeye’s fried chicken over that of a local hole in the wall joint (the hole in the wall joint won out–why do the places that barely pass health inspection have the best food?), and mulled over the guest list. Excitement!

Fast forward a few hours, and we grab a late dinner with our favorite Hyperboy, who casually suggests we catch karaoke at a bar in my neighborhood. I ask Tech Boo if he’ll do it with me–he’s done it before, I haven’t–and he agrees. Practice for our upcoming summer shindig. Excitement!

So the bar, like too many other bars in this city–which has managed to simultaneously hold the distinction of being 1) the country’s most livable city, 2) the sootiest city, worse even than LA, and 3) the city with the highest per capita of pregnant smokers–let that marinate for a minute–is smoky. But we press on and claim a vacant booth. The catalogue of possible songs to sing is huge. But of course we are only looking for duets, so that really cuts thing down to size. We also want something upbeat, but it looks like we’re going to be stuck with a ballad.

I start to get nervous. There’s a reason I’ve never done karaoke before. For most of my life, I’ve been self-conscious to the point of paralysis, never wanting to draw attention to myself, convinced that everyone in any given room is watching me and judging me harshly. Only recently have I overcome that…but karaoke? That’s asking a bit much. Still, tonight, I’m determined.

I look around the room for comfort. Most people aren’t even paying attention to the people on the mic. They are drinking, eating, laughing–and of course, smoking. Some are studying the karaoke catalogue as if the big karaoke final is tomorrow morning.

A few people, like the couple who look like Peaches and Herb probably look these days, can really sang, as we say in the vernacular. They perform and are rewarded with loud applause and big whoops. They are the exception, however. A few tone deaf individuals do their thing, and I assure myself that no matter what, I won’t be that bad.

The roster of performers is long. Tech Boo and I finally settle on “Always” by Atlantic Starr, and add our tiny post-it to the waiting list. In the meantime, I study the hilarious list of rules posted at the front of the karaoke catalogue. They include:

If you’re too drunk to choose a song and write your name on the sign up sheet, you are too drunk to sing.

No swinging the mic.

No screaming into the mic.

Don’t throw or intentionally drop the mic.

Don’t intentionally hit, tap, or pound the mic. Don’t clap with it, don’t hit any part of your body, or anyone else’s body, with it.

Don’t put the mic in your mouth or in ANY body opening…PERIOD (no exceptions).

[At this point, I’m considering disinfecting the mic before touching it.]

No BEATBOXing.

No stripping…really, we don’t want to see you naked…

Confident that I could abide by these rules that, really, should go without saying, I go back to being nervous. I start singing parts of “Always” that I remember. In the loud bar, what I can hear of myself doesn’t sound bad at all. Tech Boo practices a bit too, and I tell him, “You always sound great.” And it’s true.

We wait for a small eternity, and I start to get cold feet. Plus, it’s getting late and Tech Boo has a plane to catch in the morning. We decide that if we aren’t called in the next two turns, we’re leaving.

So of course we immediately hear, “Deesha and Tech Boo, come to the stage!”

Well, I decide to strut to the stage, figuring if I act the part, my confidence will catch up. I go right to the mike like I’ve done this a million times. The song starts, and I find that I can’t look at Tech Boo, or the audience. I’ll just stand sideways and look at the nearby screen, instead of the one in the back of the room which would force me to actually make eye contact with the audience.

The first line is Tech Boo’s: “Girl, you are to me…all that a woman should be…”

Omigod. Someone must have shoved this mike into a body opening when we weren’t looking because Tech Boo sounds…waaaaay off-key.

Which means I’m going to sound…

A hot mess. Wow. I forgot something while we were busy choosing a song and rolling our eyes at the folks who couldn’t sing: I can’t sing. Not a lick. Can’t carry a tune if you put it in a suitcase for me.

I blame all those years of singing along with the music. I should have sung more in the shower, where I couldn’t hide from the truth. I did recall the one time when I was in the 9th grade and my girlfriends and I decided to record ourselves singing “Saving All My Love for You”. You couldn’t tell us we weren’t Whitneys-in-training…until the playback. It was just god-awful, but surely I alone could not wreak such havoc on a song.

Oh, but I can. And I did. I figured, the only thing worse than continuing to sing was to quit. So, we kept going. I never once looked at the audience; I never once sang the right note or in the right key either.

I kept hoping Tech Boo would redeem us, but he didn’t. And when we sang together, I consistently sang louder–and wrong-er.

Who knew that song was so freakin’ long???

And of course, while we’re up there, Hyperboy comes and snaps a picture.

We finished to polite applause, and I did the only thing I could do: Threw my head back and strutted back to my seat, looking at nary a soul as I passed.

Back in the booth, I pounced on Tech Boo. “What happened? You always sound so good when you sing to me.”

“Dear. You hear with ears of love. Not to be trusted.”

Now he tells me.

So, now I have until mid-June to get up the nerve to embarrass myself again. But this time, it will be in front of familiar faces, so I figure I’ve done the harder thing.

In the meantime, I’ll keep watching this lady to feel better about myself:

I’ve recently added some good folks to ye olde blogroll. Please go get your mind fed.

Love,
Mamalicious!

MyAmericanMeltingPot from the author of Kinky Gazpacho

Negrophile It’s Negrolicious!

The Learning Center in ExileMusings from DebbieDeb, my sister from another mother

VerySmartBrothas  “best served with post-coital grits and turkey bacon”…The Champ is my homie, my ace boon, my bro-ham…allathat!

While the whole country, it seems, has Rev. Jeremiah on continuous play, I (and others) have noted that McCain’s connection to Rev. Hagee has (surprise!) largely gone unnoticed by the media outlets that are salivating over the Obama-Wright connection.  Why hasn’t McCain been made to account for Hagee, I wondered.  Well, from my mouth to Frank Rich’s ears…

The All-White Elephant in the Room

BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.

What you’ll find is a white televangelist, the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is “the Great Whore,” Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking “the blood of the Jewish people.” That’s because the Great Whore represents “the Roman Church,” which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.

Mr. Hagee is not a fringe kook but the pastor of a Texas megachurch. On Feb. 27, he stood with John McCain and endorsed him over the religious conservatives’ favorite, Mike Huckabee, who was then still in the race.

Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything then about Mr. Hagee’s views? This particular YouTube video — far from the only one — was posted on Jan. 1, nearly two months before the Hagee-McCain press conference. Mr. Hagee appears on multiple religious networks, including twice daily on the largest, Trinity Broadcasting, which reaches 75 million homes. Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops.

Since then, Mr. McCain has been shocked to learn that his clerical ally has made many other outrageous statements. Mr. Hagee, it’s true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled “homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came.”

Mr. Hagee didn’t make that claim in obscure circumstances, either. He broadcast it on one of America’s most widely heard radio programs, “Fresh Air” on NPR, back in September 2006. He reaffirmed it in a radio interview less than two weeks ago. Only after a reporter asked Mr. McCain about this Katrina homily on April 24 did the candidate brand it as “nonsense” and the preacher retract it.

Mr. McCain says he does not endorse any of Mr. Hagee’s calumnies, any more than Barack Obama endorses Mr. Wright’s. But those who try to give Mr. McCain a pass for his embrace of a problematic preacher have a thin case. It boils down to this: Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr. Hagee’s church.

That defense implies, incorrectly, that Mr. McCain was a passive recipient of this bigot’s endorsement. In fact, by his own account, Mr. McCain sought out Mr. Hagee, who is perhaps best known for trying to drum up a pre-emptive “holy war” with Iran. (This preacher’s rantings may tell us more about Mr. McCain’s policy views than Mr. Wright’s tell us about Mr. Obama’s.) Even after Mr. Hagee’s Catholic bashing bubbled up in the mainstream media, Mr. McCain still did not reject and denounce him, as Mr. Obama did an unsolicited endorser, Louis Farrakhan, at the urging of Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton. Mr. McCain instead told George Stephanopoulos two Sundays ago that while he condemns any “anti-anything” remarks by Mr. Hagee, he is still “glad to have his endorsement.”

I wonder if Mr. McCain would have given the same answer had Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted him with the graphic video of the pastor in full “Great Whore” glory. But Mr. McCain didn’t have to fear so rude a transgression. Mr. Hagee’s videos have never had the same circulation on television as Mr. Wright’s. A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn’t have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man.

Perhaps that’s why virtually no one has rebroadcast the highly relevant prototype for Mr. Wright’s fiery claim that 9/11 was America’s chickens “coming home to roost.” That would be the Sept. 13, 2001, televised exchange between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who blamed the attacks on America’s abortionists, feminists, gays and A.C.L.U. lawyers. (Mr. Wright blamed the attacks on America’s foreign policy.) Had that video re-emerged in the frenzied cable-news rotation, Mr. McCain might have been asked to explain why he no longer calls these preachers “agents of intolerance” and chose to cozy up to Mr. Falwell by speaking at his Liberty University in 2006.

None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right. It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama’s long relationship with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh Mr. Obama’s judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as it has repeatedly boiled over. But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick.

When Rudy Giuliani, still a viable candidate, successfully courted Pat Robertson for an endorsement last year, few replayed Mr. Robertson’s greatest past insanities. Among them is his best-selling 1991 tome, “The New World Order,” which peddled some of the same old dark conspiracy theories about “European bankers” (who just happened to be named Warburg, Schiff and Rothschild) that Mr. Farrakhan has trafficked in. Nor was Mr. Giuliani ever seriously pressed to explain why his cronies on the payroll at Giuliani Partners included a priest barred from the ministry by his Long Island diocese in 2002 following allegations of sexual abuse. Much as Mr. Wright officiated at the Obamas’ wedding, so this priest officiated at (one of) Mr. Giuliani’s. Did you even hear about it?

There is not just a double standard for black and white politicians at play in too much of the news media and political establishment, but there is also a glaring double standard for our political parties. The Clintons and Mr. Obama are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power than blacks.

A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite an achievement. Yet the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic racial skirmish are almost never asked to confront or even acknowledge the racial dysfunction in their own house. In our mainstream political culture, this de facto apartheid is simply accepted as an intractable given, unworthy of notice, and just too embarrassing to mention aloud in polite Beltway company. Those who dare are instantly accused of “political correctness” or “reverse racism.”

An all-white Congressional delegation doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the legacy of race cards that have been dealt since the birth of the Southern strategy in the Nixon era. No one knows this better than Mr. McCain, whose own adopted daughter of color was the subject of a vicious smear in his party’s South Carolina primary of 2000.

This year Mr. McCain has called for a respectful (i.e., non-race-baiting) campaign and has gone so far as to criticize (ineffectually) North Carolina’s Republican Party for running a Wright-demonizing ad in that state’s current primary. Mr. McCain has been posing (awkwardly) with black people in his tour of “forgotten” America. Speaking of Katrina in New Orleans, he promised that “never again” would a federal recovery effort be botched on so grand a scale.

This is all surely sincere, and a big improvement over Mitt Romney’s dreams of his father marching with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Up to a point. Here, too, there’s a double standard. Mr. McCain is graded on a curve because the G.O.P. bar is set so low. But at a time when the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll shows that President Bush is an even greater drag on his popularity than Mr. Wright is on Mr. Obama’s, Mr. McCain’s New Orleans visit is more about the self-interested politics of distancing himself from Mr. Bush than the recalibration of policy.

Mr. McCain took his party’s stingier line on Katrina aid and twice opposed an independent commission to investigate the failed government response. Asked on his tour what should happen to the Ninth Ward now, he called for “a conversation” about whether anyone should “rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is.” Whatever, whenever, never mind.

For all this primary season’s obsession with the single (and declining) demographic of white working-class men in Rust Belt states, America is changing rapidly across all racial, generational and ethnic lines. The Census Bureau announced last week that half the country’s population growth since 2000 is due to Hispanics, another group understandably alienated from the G.O.P.

Anyone who does the math knows that America is on track to become a white-minority nation in three to four decades. Yet if there’s any coherent message to be gleaned from the hypocrisy whipped up by Hurricane Jeremiah, it’s that this nation’s perennially promised candid conversation on race has yet to begin.