Washblog

I was brought up with stories of my ancestor, Ezekiel Hart, who was, my mother told me, the first Jew to be elected to British Parliament -- in Canada. That was 1807. A ruckus ensued when he took his oath of office on the Jewish Bible, and then Great Britain expelled him from the assembly anyway, on account of his religion. Here's the Wiki article on Ezekiel. My great grandfather on that side of the family, Archibald Hart, was elected in 1911 as a Democratic US Representative. He would not have won office, I'm sure, had there been in those days a right-wing noise machine to scream about his Jewish heritage. Mainstream culture then didn't look too kindly on what my grandmother referred to as "Jewish blood." Racism and religious bigotry pay. They paid back in 1807, they paid in 1911, and they pay in 2006. I like to think we're better off now than in 1807. At least our laws don't overtly enshrine bigotry. But where will we be in 2100?

What hope is there for moving beyond an us-against-them mindset that is so easily manipulated for political and economic gain? Can Barack Obama's candidacy overcome the hysteria that's being created here? Can it help us come to terms with some of these race and religion issues? Keith Ellison, in the CNN interview cited above, refers to "a learning gap we have to close." I'm hoping Obama finds a way in this campaign to help us close this learning gap. I hope he can get his "we are one American family" message across on race and religion -- as he did on partisanship in his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.