Why Ask Why
Posted on October 20, 2008 at 7:56 amNewscoma tells us what she thinks about those who think that Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama had something to do with race:
I think it’s narrow-minded to automatically dismiss that Powell endorsed Obama strictly on the race issue.
I’ve never seen him endorse Al Sharpton or Jessie Jackson, have you? So the race issue doesn’t wash with me in Powell’s decision. He has one vote, he told you who he was voting for and he told you why.
And that’s that.
SEE ALSO: Mark Mays
Transferring Transcendence: How Powell’s Endorsement Helps McCain
Posted on October 19, 2008 at 1:10 pmAs was speculated earlier this week, former Secretary of State Colin Powell did endorse Barack Obama for President of United States on Meet the Press this morning.
This action by Powell is being seen, predictably, as one of the final nails in the coffin of the candidacy of John McCain.
A man, who has in his own career transcended race, a man who spent much of his life in service of Republican Presidents, a military man who brings to the table many of the qualities Barack Obama lacks, has endorsed a candidate many white Americans still have questions about. What could be worse for John McCain?
The fact that a man like Colin Powell has no questions about Barack Obama leading this nation, the media elites say, contributes to the narrative that Barack Obama has closed the deal with the American people.
To the informed, enlightened center of the country, this will no doubt be how the endorsement is viewed. But this small sector of the American populace has already come to terms with Obama. Informed, elite opinion in America has already accepted Obama as a man they are comfortable with executing the duties of President of the United States.
However, this informed center, this malleable elite, will not make up the margin of victory for Obama in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. It will be another sector of the electorate who will have the final say.
The average white man or woman in America is no longer overtly or even covertly racist by any honest definition of that word. Sure, many whites feel more comfortable with those who look as they do but this is a quality hardly unique to the Caucasian population of America.
Most white people see themselves as very much open to dream of Martin Luther King, that we should all be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character. Ability, qualifications, intelligence and ideology — all of these things most whites believe should trump racial considerations.
This fundamental embrace of King’s dream by white America, however, is exactly what could cause them to be alarmed by the endorsement of Barack Obama by Colin Powell. Marc Ambinder said this morning that “to the extent that there remain white voters who have inchoate worries about Obama’s race, it helps to have him associated with a man whose race they’ve already gotten over.”
Yes, Colin Powell has transcended race for much of his life. But transcendence is not something that one can necessarily transfer and, in trying, Colin Powell risks to damage his own reputation on that score.
Colin Powell is, as has been noted over and over, a lifelong Republican, one of Rockafeller stripe to be sure, but a Republican nonetheless. He is a friend of John McCain and admires him greatly. In August 2007, Powell, gave to John McCain the maximum contribution of $2,300.
Colin Powell, a lifelong Republican, wanted John McCain nominated by the GOP and the Republican Party, to the surprise of many conservatives, obliged. But when faced with the choice of the Republican he favored in primary and whom he admires and calls a friend and Barack Obama, Powell chose Barack Obama.
Rightly or wrongly, many white voters will no doubt conclude, despite Powell’s protestations, that at least one of the deciding factors in his decision was race. Many whites will assume that the prospect of the nation’s first black president had become too real for Powell to just stand back and say nothing.
If that is the conclusion that whites reach regarding the endorsement then what are they likely to conclude about the prospects of colorblindness on both sides of the racial divide in America?
Most whites in America have no problem voting for a man who happens to be black to lead our country. What many whites do have a problem with is electing an explicitly black leader who will bring with him to the White House a racial agenda.
It is the fear of, as I call it, “The Big Payback.” While whites may never verbalize it, they are afraid of electing a black leader who will attempt to right the wrongs their ancestors perpetrated but which they had nothing to do with.
Most whites in America have no sense of racial solidarity. They do not think of themselves as white Americans or any kind of hyphenated American, they see themselves as simply Americans. Whether their actions and words contain vestiges and evidence of racism and white privilege, I suppose is an open question. The fact remains, however, that they do not see it that way and never will.
What they are capable of seeing, however, is racial solidarity among blacks and they are not the biggest fans. Whites see themselves as accepting of all races and judging people on their own individual merits. What worries them most is that their shrugging off of racial identity and solidarity is a one way street.
Colin Powell is certainly not unique among Republican types in his support for Obama and his reasons for supporting Obama may be very much similar to those Republicans and conservatives. Personally, I assume that they are.
But the fact remains that Colin Powell is still a black man and seeing a man line up with the black candidate in opposition to the party he has called home makes whites ask questions like:
“Would Colin Powell have endorsed Hilary Clinton against his friend John McCain?”
“How about John Edwards?”
“Would Colin Powell have endorsed any white Democratic candidate in a race against John McCain?”
When Barack Obama is trying to close the deal with white, working class voters who reject racial solidarity by both blacks and whites, I’m not sure that the endorsement of one the of the most admired blacks in America is quite the boon many in the punditocracy think it is.
SEE ALSO:
Sean Braisted
Six Meat Buffett
Washington Post
NY Times
Marc Ambinder
Huffington Post
Yglesias
Jonathan Martin
Rush Limbaugh
Political Radar
Ben Smith
Hotline
Tiny Cat Pants
Mark Mays
Steve Clemons
Nate Silver
Ready Or Not, Here He Comes
Posted on September 22, 2008 at 8:14 amFrom a now infamous AP analysis over the weekend:
More than a third of all white Democrats and independents — voters Obama can’t win the White House without — agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don’t have such views.
SEE ALSO:
Fournier Brings Racism Back
The race discussion Obama didn’t want
Race helps, hinders Obama, polls show
Dems’ prejudice may cost Obama votes
Will White Dem Racism Cost Obama The Election?
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Looking Deeper Into Obama’s Race Problem
Posted on August 20, 2008 at 8:00 pmA discussion of the racial implications of John McCain’s continued attacks on Bracak Obama’s qualifications:
But Obama’s problem with race goes much deeper than that small slice of the public that’s adamantly against a black President. Obama, as a black man, is particularly vulnerable to a challenge to his qualifications.
Unqualified blacks getting into high positions reminds some white voters of the worst stereotypes of affirmative action.
Even the mere mention of affirmative action is so powerful that it can activate white prejudice. In a national split sample of white voters, half of the sample was asked their opinion about affirmative action prior to being asked a short battery of standard questions about prejudice. The other half was assessed on prejudice first. Whites who merely heard the phrase “affirmative action” first were more likely than other whites to think that blacks were violent, less intelligent and lazy.
This is why the McCain ads that focus on Obama’s short résumé are so brilliant. While only a small portion of the white electorate is unwilling to vote for a qualified black candidate, a much larger percentage of whites resent it when they feel blacks are getting promoted faster because of race.
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Tinker Acolyte Says Incendiary Ad Has Nothing To With Race
Posted on August 5, 2008 at 7:59 amWell, of course, not. Silly us.
Former Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey said Monday that the Nikki Tinker ad featuring pictures of a Ku Klux Klan rally and denunciations of incumbent Congressman Steve Cohen’s vote not to remove the statue and remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest from a Memphis park “has nothing to do with race.”
Asked if injecting the incendiary television images into Thursday’s 9th Congressional District Democratic Primary contest would be seen as racially divisive, Bailey said: “That may be an ancillary side of it, but that’s not the main focus, and it’s not the intended focus.”
SEE ALSO: TNGW
Generation Y On Race
Posted on July 28, 2008 at 12:42 pmThey aren’t that colorblind:
Somebody needs to get the facts straight. I’m sorry to break it to Mr. Brokaw and to all others above my age bracket, but my peers and I are by no means colorblind.
What may be fueling this concept of the raceless Millennials is the extent to which we’re intermixing. There are more interracial couples, more biracial children and an expansion of the definitions of ethnicity, but all of that has done little to help us understand each other better. Los Angeles Times writer Rosa Brooks discussed the impact of race on my generation in her January 2008 piece, “Sex, Race and Gen Y Voters.” Brooks explains:
“[Younger] Americans just don’t think about race in the same simplistic ways [as Americans over 40]. They’re more likely than older Americans to be minorities themselves, for one thing. In 2006, only 19.8 percent of Americans over 60 were minorities, compared with about 40 percent of Americans under the age of 40. And younger minorities come from a far wider range of racial and ethnic backgrounds than their older counterparts.”
So, we’re mixing more than ever. That’s for sure. But diversity doesn’t necessarily equate to cultural understanding. Gen Y’ers often deal with race in an overt, in-your-face manner through jokes, stereotypical references and cultural tourism.
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One Of Us
Posted on at 6:51 amPaul West suggests that the 2006 U.S. Senate campaign of Harold Ford, Jr. may carry lessons for the campaign of Barack Obama:
Another statewide election that year, which has gotten less attention as a potential model for Obama, took place in Tennessee, where Rep. Harold Ford Jr. tried to become the first black elected to the Senate from the South since the 1800s.
Ford lost, but by less than three percentage points. The close finish sent a clear message: race was becoming less of an impediment for black candidates, even in the South.
The Democrat’s defeat, according to officials of both campaigns and independent analysts, had less to do with race than with issues of corruption involving members of his family and his background as a Washington insider.
“Saying race is not a factor at all is naïve,” said Dave Beattie, a Democratic pollster who conducted opinion surveys in Tennessee during and after the Senate contest. “It’s that race is one of many factors that have to be dealt with.”
Like Obama, Ford avoided making race the focus of the campaign, despite the news media’s attention to it.
“This was not an issue he ran on. He never said, ‘Let’s make history,’” said Pete
Brodnitz, who was Ford’s pollster (and whose firm is the lead pollster for Obama’s presidential campaign). “He was very clear that the election was not about race.”Republican candidate Bob Corker avoided direct racial appeals but the issue was injected anyway.
Late in October, the national Republican Party ran an ad that attacked Ford for attending a Super Bowl party sponsored by Playboy magazine. In the ad, an attractive blonde cooed, “Harold, call me.”
The ad was criticized as racially tinged and quickly became “a big distraction” that interfered with the Democrat’s effort to communicate his message through the news media, his pollster said.
Paul Begala, a key strategist in Bill Clinton’s rise to the presidency, said the attack on Ford contained “one of the most powerful messages that Republicans always try to pin on Democrats: (that) ‘he’s not one of us.’”
Attacks on Ford’s relatives defined him in negative terms over something he had no control over.
“Perhaps the lessons of that helped Barack’s team get him through the Jeremiah Wright” controversy, according to Begala.
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Class The Problem With Obama, Not Race?
Posted on May 9, 2008 at 7:15 amGoldnI points to the Economist:
Mr Obama’s main problem with white voters may have more to do with class than race. To the white working man and woman, he has been seen too often as an aloof elitist, who can’t drink whisky, displays a suspicious familiarity with the price of an arugula salad and memorably bowled a deplorable 37 in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Toffishness doomed John Kerry; but with Mr Obama, a child of a single mother who sometimes used food stamps, that picture is surely reversible.
Meanwhile, Mr Obama attracts other voters in a way Mrs Clinton never has. For every white bigot who switches sides because of Mr Obama’s skin colour, there is likely to be a white independent—especially a young one—running to support him. The data show that young people, both black and white, prefer Mr Obama. Against Mrs Clinton, Mr McCain might have swept up all the independents; with Mr Obama he will have to split them.
Is the Economist correct that it is class, not race that alienates white working men and women from Obama or is it a more sinister combination of both?
Is it that, on some subconscious level, the white working class don’t appreciate someone of Obama’s race being someone of Obama’s class?
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