One thing that really struck me when watching the two political conventions was that the Democratic Convention was very inclusive. You had young and old, all different ethnicities, people with disabilities. Forty-four percent of the delegates were people of color. What a great representation of our country!
As I watched the Republican Convention, I really had to search the crowd to find a person of color. I also had to search the crowd to find someone under 55. Seriously. It looked like a senior citizen's convention. A white senior citizen's convention.
I remember one Republican pundit saying that they don't have quotas and that's why the Democratic Convention has more people of color. Well, I was part of the caucuses here in Washington State, and we do have goals in order to be more inclusive but guess what? We met most of our goals during the regular caucuses. Meaning, during the Congressional District Caucuses, when the national delegates were elected, we voted for a diverse delegation. Diverse in terms of age, race, sexual orientation, gender and disability status. You see, Democrats are inclusive! We don't limit our delegates to a select group of European-American, upper-middle-class 60-year-olds.
So what does this have to do with Sarah Palin? Apparently, she has absolutely no relationship with the African-American community in Alaska and has not returned any phone calls from one of the African-American leaders in Alaska. She doesn't feel it's important. Check out these two blogs:
http://freerangewriting.blogspot.com/2008/09/palin-and-divesity-representation.html
http://electronicvillage.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah-palin-and-african-americans-in.html
Clearly, we can see where she stands in terms of her relationship with people of color.
