Like with Medicaid, if you’re a child of color, chances are much higher that
SCHIP is your only shot at coverage. For many kids of color, at least.
Others are shut out entirely. In the 1990’s, Congress saddled immigrant
children with extra limits, including a five-year waiting period.

That exclusion was going to be reversed in the House’s SCHIP bill. The
strategy would be sleight-of-hand. If we made no fanfare, went the logic,
maybe we could slip it through.

The fight got nastier. The bill would have let states stop requiring birth
certificates or other docs for citizens, which the right called a giveaway
to “illegal immigrants.” This was a chip off their old baseless-attack
block. But calling out the inaccuracies only reinforces them. And, in this
case – when the defensive response meant joining the attack on undocumented
children – it isn’t the principled approach, either.

In the end, the Democrats let immigrant kids get shuffled out of the bill.
Bush still rejected it. Then, in a radio address on the veto, the Dems
brought out Graeme Frost, a seemingly unassailable SCHIP icon. He’s white,
blonde, and 12. He comes from a struggling two-parent family, and survived a
horrendous car crash.

If only the heartless would nix SCHIP reauthorization, you’d have to be
absolutely cold-blooded to think a boy like Graeme doesn’t deserve health
care. His parents speak English – and no one has to comment on how
stunningly articulate they are.

Well, as the Dems learned, whiteness doesn’t provide a free pass. Just look
at the right-wing attacks on the Frosts – the spurious statements about
their cushy finances and the ensuing hate mail. Even hardened progressives
were shocked, shocked. They’d gone after a child.

Maybe abandoning racial equity isn’t a foolproof strategy, after all. And
maybe our commitment to covering all our children will be measured not just
by the President’s veto, but by the strength of the bill that reached his
desk.

Julie Chinitz, Northwest Federation of Community Organizations(NWFCO) Research Associate