Once again, science is shaking up our comfortable notions of race and ethnicity. First, there was that whole flap over whether one of America’s Founding Fathers had a black mistress (DNA tests suggested he did). Now an article in Wednesday’s New York Times describes an offbeat in-class experiment at Pennsylvania State University. Students in a sociology class agreed to have the insides of their cheeks swabbed in return for a DNA profile that stated — down to the percentage point — how much white, black, Asian, or indigenous American blood flows through their veins. One student, a self-described “proud black man,” was shocked to learn that he is 48 percent white.

It’s interesting to think what would happen if we all took these kinds of DNA tests. How much would it uproot our lives to learn — as many of us probably would — that our bloodlines flow into previously unknown waters?

The fact that we would be surprised by such news is another reminder that race is — as sociologists like to say — “socially constructed.” That is, race has more of a reality in people’s heads than in the makeup of their genes. If you believe yourself to be black and others see you as black, you are black — even if your DNA begs to differ. The racial category of Hispanic or Latino in the United States (the U.S. Census Bureau categorizes it as an “ethnicity”) is another example of social construction. It includes people of widely varying degrees of European, indigenous American, and African ancestry, but somehow has been boiled down to a single, catch-all identity, bound together more by a perception of shared culture than any strict notion of biology. Early 20th-century Mexican writer José Vasconcelos celebrated this mixed identity, heralding the rise of a “cosmic race.”

Just because race is in our heads doesn’t mean it is trivial or that we can just decide tomorrow to forget about it — after all, how people perceive you often dictates the social circles you dwell in, the opportunities you enjoy, and so on. That said, what is constructed can be reconstructed. If there is any hope to ending ethnic hatreds, it may lie in an acknowledgment that round human beings can no longer be fit into square racial categories. It may depend on the emergence on a truly “cosmic” race of individuals no longer tied to the old lies of racial purity.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

You can’t walk around the convention floor without bumping into a war hero. This election year, Democrats are trying to downplay their peace-and-love image and throw some men and women who know how to fire heavy weapons on camera. They include decorated soldiers from conflicts past, such as Max Cleland, the former senator from Georgia who lost three limbs in the Vietnam War. In a few hours Cleland will say some words about his fellow Vietnam Veteran, John Kerry, and present him to the convention’s assembled delegates for the first time.

Veterans, however, are a growing commodity, thanks to the ongoing hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. They include young men like Jeremy Broussard, a 27-year-old African American who served in southern Iraq as a captain in the U.S. Army, providing fire support to the Marines during the U.S.-led invasion of that country. Broussard, a native of New Orleans, is at the Fleet Center this week to show solidarity with the Democratic Party and its veteran nominee. “A big concern of mine is the [Bush] administration is not honest with the American people about what’s happening in Iraq,” he says. “… The main enemy on 9/11 was Al Qaeda. And Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. We’re sending it all into Iraq, and what you’re seeing is Afghanistan is on the backburner.”

The Bush administration, Broussard says, has also failed to support the troops fully when they’ve come home, cutting pay and benefits for enlisted men and women: “They’re doing photo ops with vets, but in reality [veterans] are getting stabbed in the back.” Morale is at a low, he says: Before the Iraq War started, the worst assignment was in South Korea, guarding the no man’s land between that country and nuke-empowered North Korea. Nowadays, however, so many soldiers want to be transferred to South Korea that their requests are being denied. “They’ll go” to Iraq, Broussard says of his fellow soldiers. “They’ll do their service. But they don’t want to be there.”

Even pro-Kerry veterans like Broussard, however, are not necessarily enamored of the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party. Broussard says that he saw Michael Moore’s film, Fahrenheit 9/11, which includes interviews with soldiers serving in Iraq. But Broussard feels the depiction of soldiers in the film — for instance, a segment in which a G.I. speaks with relish of gunning down insurgents with heavy metal music ringing in his ears — was “two-dimensional.” “I want to make sure that people understand that soldiers are not mindless killing machines. No one enjoys it … But we’re there to do a job.”

It’s clear that Kerry needs to keep the anti-war faction of the party from breaking ranks while also not alienating veterans like Broussard, many of whom — in spite of the all the alleged deception and undisputed toll in human life in Iraq — do not wish the United States to pull out and leave a power vacuum in that Middle Eastern country. The abundance of veterans on the stage this week — including the former NATO commander, General Wesley Clark, tonight — seems to indicate that the Kerry team is leaning decisively in one direction.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

The modern-day political convention, at its best, is a lovefest, where egos are coddled and factions appeased, and the party reemerges as a united front, singing the praises of their chosen leader. The Democratic National Convention has so far stuck to the script. After more than a year of sometimes brutal campaigning in the primary season, Democrats of every pedigree are coming together to pay their respects and collectively kiss the ring of the all-but-anointed Democratic candidate, John Kerry. One of the less-than-obvious singers of Kerry’s praises was Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio congressman and the last person standing alongside Kerry in the Democratic primary race (at this point, just symbolically). “We Democrats are one,” he said. “We are left, right, center. We are one for John Kerry.” While the anti-war Kucinich railed against the “distortions and misrepresentations” that had brought the U.S. military in full force into Iraq, he maintained that a John Kerry victory would “not just be the victory of one party, but … a victory of faith over cynicism.”

The previous night the symbolism had been even more intense: at the podium was Howard Dean, the former governor from Vermont, once Kerry’s chief rival for the nomination, the man who shocked many in the political establishment with the grassroots, Internet-enhanced campaign that his supporters waged. A moderate governor who, as presidential candidate, rallied liberal anger against Bush’s foreign policy, Dean used to quip on the stump that “I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” He was speaking a different line last night. “We are all here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” Dean declared, adding that he stood “shoulder to shoulder” with his former rival.

As Dean ended his speech with an admonition that “only you have the power,” fluorescent blue and red stripes billowed across the stadium-sized TV and the song “We Are Family” pumped through the speakers. It was jubilant; it was corny; it was what you expect of a convention. Like soldiers closing rank, each of the week’s speakers — from liberal mavericks like Dennis Kucinich to centrists like Bill Clinton — have struck the same themes of unity (of party) and adulation (for Kerry). Kucinich, for instance, has taken the most radical position of any major Democrat against the Iraq War — he calls for an immediate withdrawal of troops, a highly improbable scenario even in a Kerry administration. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party platform approved this week outlines a strategy for Iraq that is all but the same as the Bush administration’s, as Middle East expert Juan Cole has pointed out: There is no strong anti-war plank, and a Kerry administration would remain committed to staying in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

The spirit of solidarity has even sunk into the psyche of those Democrats who stand outside the party establishment – the young “Deaniacs” who brought the Vermont governor to the national stage last year, the multitudes of angry men and women who felt their anger channeled by Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11, the progressives who heard their ideals expressed most articulately by the congressman from Ohio. Both Dean and Moore spoke at a local forum sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal think tank, this week. At the “Taking Back America” forum, organizers referred to the week’s event as an “alternative convention.” Sure enough, the rhetoric at the afternoon panel on Tuesday far surpassed the bland pronouncements at the convention hall. “You will not win this election by being weak-kneed and wishy-washy. The only way this is going to happen is if you be forthright and say what you believe … If you [Kerry] move to the right, you will encourage millions to stay home — the people who are already discouraged” from voting. Moore, the baseball-capped, blue-jean-wearing, and just generally rumpled documentary filmmaker who has been dubbed (by conservative critics) as the “leader of the hate and vitriol celebrity set,” also fired back at his enemies. “They aren’t patriots,” he said. “They’re hate-triots. They believe in the politics of hate.”

That said, even liberal warriors like Moore are slick and/or savvy enough to realize that they can’t leave 2004 to the whims of wavering voters. Moore, a stalwart supporter of Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2000, now has little patience for the 2004 re-contender. “A word about Ralph Nader,” he said, as a chorus of Democratic boos cascaded down. “You’ve already done your job. The Democratic Party of 2004 is not the Democratic Party of 2000. The work has been done by Dean and Kucinich. Even the Al Gore of 2004 is not the Al Gore of 2000.”

In truth, the party is still diverse and contentious in its thinking. This united front is just a temporary state of grace. Kucinich, the Ohio congressman and (still un-conceded) presidential candidate, hinted as much in interviews this week: He is throwing his support behind Kerry, he said, because after the election he believes the anti-war movement can convince Kerry to change his mind on Iraq. In other words, Democrats are going to do anything it takes to win — but if Kerry does win, the old battles are likely to resurface with renewed vigor.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

If Monday was the night for the party’s stars, Tuesday was the night to show off its diversity. California Congressman Mike Honda spoke of his Japanese American family’s internment a half-century ago. African American poet and activist Maya Angelou performed, followed by Arizona American Indians singing the national anthem in the Tohono O’odham language. Rhode Island’s U.S. representative, Jim Langevin, rolled out to the podium in his wheelchair to extol the virtues of the all-but-anointed Democratic candidate, John Kerry. But the night’s most dynamic speaker, by far, was Barack Obama, the all-but-elected candidate for senator in Illinois, a biracial graduate of Harvard Law School who has distinguished himself in the segregated city of Chicago for his ability to build bridges across racial lines.

Obama’s father herded goats in Kenya before coming to the United States as a student; his mother, who is white, grew up in Kansas. One grandfather was a cook serving the British colonizers; the other worked on oil rigs and farms before signing up for Patton’s army in Europe. Obama’s remarkable life story testifies to the promise of opportunity for all in this country; he declared: “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on Earth, is my story even possible.” When his speech ended, the crowd erupted in cheers, and the stadium screen in the Fleet Center flashed a live feed from Obama’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where elderly black women in summer dresses clapped with exuberance.

Obama is almost certain to win come November (the Republicans have so far failed to field a candidate in his race). He is months away from becoming the only person of African descent in the Senate and, with his echoes of Clinton-style eloquence, will surely be a star in the national Democratic Party for years to come.

The other revealed talent last night was Teresa Heinz Kerry, the candidate’s wife and First Lady in waiting. Conservative analysts immediately assailed her for a “self-indulgent” performance, and it’s true that her speech was as much, or more, about her views than those of her husband’s. (Is a wife not supposed to speak her own mind? She insisted on this right: “My only hope is that, one day soon, women — who have all earned the right to their opinions — instead of being labeled opinionated, will be called smart or well-informed, just as men are.”) But it also showed that Heinz Kerry has the makings of an international superstar — sort of like a sub-Saharan version of Eleanor Roosevelt. Starting her speech in measured, accented English, she soon moved on to phrases of welcome in Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. She spoke of growing up in Mozambique (a dictatorship where her father voted for this first time when he turned 73), her student activism against South African apartheid, her immigrant’s journey to the United States of America. Heinz Kerry wrapped up her remarks with a quintessential American quotation, the elegant oratory from Lincoln’s first inaugural address in which he urged his fellow citizens (on the eve of war) to rise above their old enmities and recognize their common destiny. “The mystic chords of memory, stre[t]ching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

It was a night to remember those better angels: the diversity — and tolerance of diversity — that has made this country strong. Convention organizers intend to highlight the party’s inclusiveness throughout the week. It’s not just a matter of race, gender, or place of origin, of course. The larger message is that Americans of all political beliefs — liberal and conservative — can fall behind the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Last night, speakers from Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy appealed to their audience in this spirit of national unity. “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America,” Obama said. “There is the United States of America.” At another point in the night, a message flashed across the big screen, describing a Republican Vietnam veteran who had decided to vote for Kerry thanks to the Bush-induced morass in Iraq. Republicans, it was implied, can be reasonable people, too.

But how well will the Democratic Party’s touted diversity play in the rest of the country — especially in those “battleground” states where the election (so the experts say) will be won and lost? Take just one of last night’s wild cards: Heinz Kerry. Will she attract women voters who want to hear someone with the courage to say (invoking Eleanor), “It is time for the world to hear women’s voices, in full and at last.”? Or, will she drive away conservatives who are made uncomfortable by the prospect of a strong woman? (It is a sad fact that this is still a concern in a national election in 2004.) Will Heinz Kerry’s foreign origins and her menagerie of difficult-to-pronounce languages draw the admiration of voters? Or, will her background further suspicions that she is an alien in political waters reserved for the native-born elect? (It’s not without good reason that Kerry refuses to speak his fluent French in earshot of American reporters.) Last night, the party was united; the next few months will show us whether the party can unite the country.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Blogger Josh Marshall was in New Hampshire at a Kerry rally when he overheard some choice racial epithets (served with a dash of Southern folksiness, of course) from Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, the octogenarian Democrat and former presidential candidate:

When Hollings was getting underway on the jobs theme he said that half of the furniture in the United States (or some such stat) was now made in China. At just that moment a startling, crashing pop! came out of one of the loudspeakers. Not missing a beat, Hollings said that there must be some “chinamen” over there who didn’t like that.

A few minutes later he was talking about “ole Suskind’s book” and how, as reported in Ron Suskind’s book about Paul O’Neil, the president had blanched at the idea of giving yet another tax cut to the rich, only to have Dick Cheney pipe in to steady his course.

In Hollings’ retelling …

“‘Haven’t we already given the rich a tax cut?’ the president said. And then ole’ Cheney said, ‘No, we want more.’ He’s the Jesse Jackson of the Republican Party! He wants it all!’”

The Jesse Jackson of the Republican party?

You’d have to say that’s a bit off message for the contemporary Democratic party. But you could see the collective will of the audience for a moment awkwardly, and then decisively, opting to give the old guy a pass.

A while later when Kerry was giving his talk, and the speaker barked up again, he brought things back to the 21st century. “It’s that Chinese guy again …”

Well, you have to give the good old boy some credit: at least he didn’t use the n-word. Progressives have been progressing. Maybe someday — if we all keep our fingers crossed — there might even be such a thing as political correctness. Wouldn’t that be something?

Since we’re on the topic of speaking from the gut, check out this delightful conversation with President Bush, who is truly a man who needs to have his ribs.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer and human rights activist who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, gave a speech this week in which she criticized the Bush administration’s foreign policy — more or less in its entirety. Some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of Sept. 11 and the war on terrorism as a pretext,” she said. A adapted version of the speech was published inThe Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper.

Here’s one particular quote from Ebadi’s essay that deserves re-reading:

I am a Muslim. In the Koran, the Prophet of Islam has said: “Thou shalt believe in thy faith and I in my religion.” That same divine book sees the mission of all prophets as that of inviting all human beings to uphold justice. Since the advent of Islam, Iran’s civilization and culture have become imbued and infused with humanitarianism, respect for the life, belief and faith of others, propagation of tolerance and avoidance of violence, bloodshed and war … The discriminatory plight of women in Islamic states, whether in the sphere of civil law or in the realm of social, political and cultural justice, has its roots in the male-dominated culture prevailing in these societies, not in Islam.

Commentators like to blame Islam for creating suicide bombers, oppressing women — even, as bizarre as it might seem, encouraging pedophila. As is the case for most religions, of course, Islam the faith is a lot different from Islam as the faithful practice it. After all, Christians found ways that the teachings of the great pacifist, Jesus Christ, could be used to justify burning alive thousands of Jews and Muslims during the Spanish Inquisition — it doesn’t take many aspiring demagogues before a religion of peace starts spawning legions of hatemongers. Thankfully, questions are beginning to be raised these days about the un-peaceful practices of certain religious extremists (during the Cold War, the United States found it useful to ignore the Muslim ones). Scholars are even questioning whether conventional translations of the Qur’an, Islam’s holy book, are accurate about some rather important points — is it seventy-two “virgins” or seventy-two “fruits”? (Not to be outdone, scholars of the New Testament are also raising some crucial questions.)

In spite of what the fundamentalists (of all faiths) might say, religion is a quite malleable thing — the devil, so to speak, is in the details, and who decides those details matters a great deal. The face that Islam will show in this new century will depend on which leaders take power in Muslim countries. Which brings me back to Shirin Ebadi. She is the kind of leader that Western countries should be encouraging — a Muslim feminist who implores other Muslims to remember their faith’s humanitarian spirit, its vision of global unity that the Iranian poet Rumi once described in this way: “The sons of Adam are limbs of one another/Having been created of one essence.” If Ebadi and other like-minded Muslims can gain power in their countries, they could do much more than the hordes of CIA agents and Special Forces commandoes embedded abroad presently seem capable of doing — that is, sweeping away the terrorist-inspiring hatred that has become America’s bugbear ever since it clawed its way across the ocean on September 11. Even the more neoconservative figures in the Bush administration — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for instance — are finally coming to the view that, in addition to dropping bombs, it might be a good idea to start peddling a “kinder and gentler” Islam abroad.

The problem is, of course, that even liberal-minded Muslims like Ebadi are being alienated by the “shock and awe” foreign policy of the Bush administration. Ebadi asks: “Why is it that some decisions and resolutions of the UN Security Council are binding, while other council resolutions have no binding force? Why is it that in the past 35 years, dozens of UN resolutions concerning the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the state of Israel have not been implemented — yet, in the past 12 years, the state and people of Iraq were twice subjected to attack, military assault, economic sanctions, and, ultimately, military occupation?”

These are troubling questions — for the extremists, without question, but also for those Muslims who want to see an end to the fanaticism. If the United States truly wants to stop terrorism, it needs people like Ebadi on its side. But as long as the Bush administration stubbornly clings to its current policy of hyper-aggressive unilateralism — a policy that has created only more enemies in the Muslim world — liberal Muslims will have a hard time convincing anyone in their countries to listen to them. And that does not bode well for the sanctity of Islam, nor for the security of Americans.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen