ETHICS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Roles of Race and Religion in the Election of 2008 and the Congressional Formation and Enactment of Policies Today



Roles of Race and Religion in the Election of 2008 and the Congressional Formation and Enactment of Policies Today

Introduction

Religion is one factor that can potentially influence voting patterns and the choices made on Election Day. However, religion is but one part of the complex social mix found within the American electorate. Cleary and Hertzke (2005) mention other forces such as gender, social status, income, and ethnic identities also shape voting. In the distant past there have been other special interests such as regional identity, state rights, western and foreign expansion, attitudes to immigration, and common economic aspirations that have influenced voting decisions. Religion as a political device faces difficulties within the existing American constitutional framework (Cleary and Hertzke, 2005). This paper discusses roles of race and religion in the election of 2008 and the congressional formation and enactment of policies today in a concise and comprehensive way.

Discussion

It has never been easy being African-American and Catholic in the United States. Though many of us, along with our Latino brothers and sisters, trace our Catholic roots to traditions that have been present in the Americas for centuries, we have often been made to understand that we are invisible to many of our fellow U.S. Catholics. How else would one explain the relative insignificance of the political and cultural concerns of African-Americans and Latinos in the rhetoric of some American bishops and other Catholics who heaped vitriol on those of us who supported Barack Obama in the recent presidential election? (Cleary and Hertzke, 2005)

Although this hostility was typically directed in that election toward any Catholic who failed to share the view that abortion was the only issue that mattered in selecting a candidate, the message to Catholics of color was particularly stark: Not only were we not "real" Americans in the coded language of Sarah Palin and the Republican Party base; we were not "real" Catholics either (Cleary and Hertzke, 2005).

Rozell (2006) mentions being invisible to the Republican Party is something African-Americans have learned to live with. It is one important reason why many of us rarely vote for Republican candidates. Hispanics were perhaps a bit more relevant to the Republicans in past election cycles, but the "real" American response to immigration reform that was championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives has put an end to any meaningful outreach to Hispanics by the Republican Party for the foreseeable future (Rozell, 2006). Yet despite explicit appeals to nativism by some Republicans throughout the campaign, several Catholic bishops--apparently blind to the irony of an immigrant church supporting nativist politics--alluded to Barack Obama's candidacy in ways that made it clear that the only issue in the presidential race worth discussing, as far as they were concerned, was the criminalization of abortion (Rozell, 2006). This made the invisibility of people of color to certain Catholic bishops even more apparent, and that invisibility was much ...