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quote from her thesis that can be found on-line:
"These experiences have made it apparent..."
Posted by MariaRose in Hipster Racism
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All Eyes On Us
Tavis Smiley, the moderator of the candidates forum at Howard University this summer appeared elated as he claimed that the black vote will be the "most fought over and most sought over" in the 2008 Democratic Primaries on Sunday morning talk shows a couple of days after the debate. One can quibble with that statement, but it is abundantly clear that black voters have received more attention earlier than they have in previous cycles, and that they may well pick the next Democratic nominee.
There does not seem to be a clearly defined "black agenda" in this election cycle. In focus groups of people going into the Howard debate, education rated as the No. 1 issue for many. Like other Americans, blacks are concerned about the war in Iraq, the cost of healthcare, and the outsourcing of jobs. However, the questions asked at the Howard forum did reveal some particular areas of concerns for blacks such as the spread of HIV/AIDS and a justice system that puts so many black men in jail at some point in their lives.
Black voters will also scrutinize all of the candidates heavily before deciding whom to support. A student at Dartmouth College said of Barack Obama that she "thought he was a great candidate. ... I just need to research how he he's going to do all of things he wants ... so I can make a better decision about him." Candidates will be expected to show up in black churches and appear before black audiences many times between now and the primaries in January.
Black voters will evaluate candidates based on how well they address concerns like inner-city poverty and the genocide in Darfur and on how comfortable the candidates seem talking to them. Interestingly, blacks tend not to pick the most liberal candidate in the race. They voted for Gore over Bradley in 2000 and Clinton over Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown in 1992. Clinton provides a model of how to win with black voters; he was more at ease among blacks than any white politician in recent memory, and he campaigned on personal responsibility and welfare reform as much as anything else.
It was therefore widely assumed that his wife Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., would have the black vote to herself when she ran for president. But Barack Obama's entry into the race changed that calculus. When Obama entered the race, some political observers thought that blacks would immediately line up to support a black man. This reasoning has also proved false. In a CBS news poll taken in the beginning of the year Hillary Clinton led among black voters 52 percent to 28 percent.
A Gallup poll from late June showed the two virtually tied. While Obama's support has gone up, he has yet to take substantial majorities. At the same time, many members of the congressional black caucus have endorsed Clinton.
Origins and Roots
In light of the fact that Obama is biracial and not a descendant of American slaves, some in the black community have wondered aloud whether Obama is "black enough." Stanley Crouch wrote, "So when black Americans refer to Obama as 'one of us,' I do not know what they are talking about. In his new book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama makes it clear that, while he has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own -- nor has he lived the life of a black American."
For such people, it probably doesn't help that Obama attended Harvard Law School, or that he went to a prep school, since that doesn't represent the experience of most black Americans. To be sure this is not a fair burden -- Hillary Clinton doesn't have to answer questions about whether she's "woman enough," but Obama will have to deal with this issue nonetheless.
However, looking at Obama as a leader in the black community, or voting for him for president, for that matter, would not be an anomaly in black history, despite his different background. For example, Marcus Garvey, the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, a prominent black organization in the 1920s, was born and raised in Jamaica. And while Obama is not a descendant of black slaves, there are striking similarities between his Kenyan background and the background of blacks in the Jim Crow era.
In a sermon to a church in Selma, Ala., Obama told the crowd, "You see, my grandfather was a cook to the British in Kenya. Grew up in a small village and all his life, that's all he was -- a cook and a house boy. And that's what they called him even when he was 60 years old. They called him a houseboy. They wouldn't even call him by his last name. Sound familiar? He had to carry a passbook because Africans in their own land, in their own country, at that time because it was a British colony, could not move about freely. They could only go where they were told to go. They could only work where they were told to work." Surely, anyone alive during legalized segregation can relate to this.
I think the whole bit about blackness, although certainly an issue, is being overplayed in the media. If Obama is not black enough for black voters, then it certainly doesn't make sense for them to support Clinton, a privileged white woman. Most black voters don't have enough time to dig into Obama's record enough to know that his background is different from most of theirs. Few I have talked to know, for example, that he is biracial or know that his father is from Kenya.
Likewise, few know the intimate details of Clinton's background. Most Americans don't know, for example, that Clinton is originally from Chicago or that she attended Wellesley and Yale Law School. To explain why Clinton has led among black voters, we must therefore look at other factors.
The Clinton Factor
The first is the Clinton last name. Former President Bill Clinton was so popular among blacks that he was dubbed by Toni Morrison "the first black president." Having Bill Clinton out to make the case for her to black voters is an invaluable asset. Blacks remember the Clinton years favorably, and are anxious, like many other Americans, to return to the economic prosperity of the 1990s.
Secondly, hard as it is to believe, Obama is less well-known among black voters than Hillary Clinton is. The Gallup poll taken in June showed that about one in four voters had not heard of Obama. In fact when I talked to a friend about Obama, he asked me after several minutes, isn't "Barack a Republican?" By contrast, the Gallup poll showed Clinton has virtually universal name recognition among black voters. This is of course attributable largely to her husband and the many years the couple has had in the public spotlight.
In South Carolina, the first primary state with large numbers of black voters, which has seen more of the candidates in recent months than voters nationwide, Obama leads Clinton among blacks 41 percent to 18 percent, according to a Mason-Dixon poll. This is encouraging news for Obama. Hillary Clinton faces a ceiling of black support, while Obama has much room to grow, as more black voters learn about him. And if South Carolina is any indication, the more black voters see of Obama, the more likely they are to support him.
Thirdly, most conversations about how the black vote will go in the 2008 primaries have ignored the question of black women. This is a grave error, since black women constitute at least half of black voters. Will they feel a greater pull from the gender of Hillary Clinton or the race of Barack Obama? Black women have the privileged position of being able to make history with their votes no matter who they support. And Clinton may well have an advantage with black women. A Washington Post poll of low wage workers, or "women with needs" who are disproportionately minorities, showed that 61 percent of such women backed Clinton.
Lastly, there are many blacks who are not sure if a black man can win a presidential election. This sentiment is best epitomized by state senator Robert Ford of South Carolina, who refused to endorse Obama on the grounds that, "Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose -- because he's black and he's top of the ticket. We'd lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything." For such voters, strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire could go a long way towards convincing them that Obama is in fact electable.
Race or Issues?
Both Clinton and Obama will spend a great time appealing to blacks as the campaign goes forward. The current climate of political correctness gives each advantages and disadvantages in trying to win the votes of that demographic. This was on perfect display at Howard's candidates' forum. The biggest applause line of the night was Hillary Clinton's, when she said in response to a question about AIDS, "If HIV/AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34 there would be an outraged outcry in this country."
Clinton received a standing ovation from many of the women in the crowd. But what no one mentioned was that Clinton was able to make that statement precisely because she was white. If Obama had made such a statement, he would have been pilloried in the media the next day for "playing the race card" and pandering to black voters. The question about Obama would become not, "Is he black enough?" but "Is he too black?" In American politics, it is simply not as taboo when a white candidate brings racial issues up.
Being black gives Obama the ability to talk about personal responsibility and black underachievement in schools in ways other candidates simply cannot because of their race. In his 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, Obama said, "Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." Coming from a white candidate, that would have sounded odd, and he or she might well be accused of racism for making such a remark. As a black man, however, Obama has the authority to say things like that, which resonate with a black audience.
Political observers will be watching the black vote with great interest in coming months to see who comes out on top. With months to go before blacks vote en masse, there is still a great deal that could change.
For more on the black vote in 2008:
Also: American Blackout is a provocative documentary examining black voter disenfranchisement in the 2000 election.
Marcus Alexander Gadson is a freelance journalist and commentator on political and social issues. He has written articles on race, politics, and the war on terrorism for the Indiana Herald, Cincinatti Herald, Opednews.com, and Blogcritics Magazine.
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