Why Ask Why

By Kleinheider Posted on October 20, 2008 at 7:56 am

Newscoma 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

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Tags: Barack Obama, Colin Powell, endorsement, race, racial politics, racial solidarity  

Transferring Transcendence: How Powell’s Endorsement Helps McCain

By Kleinheider Posted on October 19, 2008 at 1:10 pm

As 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

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Tags: Barack Obama, Colin Powell, colorblind, endorsement, John McCain, Martin Luther King, race, racial solidarity