{"id":5002,"date":"2008-10-23T02:28:53","date_gmt":"2008-10-23T09:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5002"},"modified":"2008-10-23T02:28:53","modified_gmt":"2008-10-23T09:48:41","slug":"racism-limits-what-obama-can-say-if-he-wants-to-be-elected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5002","title":{"rendered":"Racism limits what Obama can say (if he wants to be elected)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a post about racism among Obama voters<\/a>, Joe Feagin at Racism Review writes:<\/p>\n

[…]unlike veteran Black civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al. Sharpton, Senator Obama has been very careful (with the exception of his one Philadelphia speech) not to talk openly about the racial hostility and discrimination, the systemic racism, perpetrated by a great many white Americans.<\/p>\n

In working on our book on \u201crace\u201d and the Obama campaign, Adia and I have discussed why Senator Obama has carefully avoided discussing civil rights issues and the venerable Black civil rights agenda, which includes getting the government to vigorously enforce U.S. civil rights laws\u2014which it has not done. Presumably, he must do this to be elected.<\/p>\n

A society founded in and still grounded in white racism<\/a> means, among other things, that a Black candidate running in a predominantly white district or area (the entire nation in this case) cannot talk candidly about the continuing and deep impacts of racial hostility and discrimination against African Americans and other Americans of color\u2014that is, he or she must still act in ways that please whites, at least a significant enough group of whites to be elected. He or she cannot talk about what may be the nation\u2019s most serious problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that’s exactly right.<\/p>\n

There is one thing Joe says that I would disagree with; at the end of his post, he implies that McCain’s lead in the polls among white voters is a sign of racism. Well, maybe it is, in a “southern strategy” sort of way; but it’s worth noting that Obama is not unusual in this regard. The majority of white voters always <\/em>vote for the Republican, at least when it comes to the Presidency.<\/p>\n

The problem is, too many people seem to think that’s a problem. Ezra Klein:<\/p>\n

One of the realities that’s a bit too treacherous to get into before the election but will surely feature into a lot of post-election analyses is the fact that John McCain is probably going to win whites and lose the presidency. Even now, 10 points down in the polls, McCain has a seven point lead among white voters. But white voters are not the only voters. Rather, they’re 68 percent or so of the populace (though probably somewhat more of the electorate).You can lose them by a couple points and still win the election handily. The question will be how that win is understood. I’ve been struggling for awhile to put this into words, but there’s definitely a odd demographic weighting among DC pundit types wherein white voters — particularly white working class voters, and even more particularly older white working class voters, and even more particularly older white working class voters who live in between California and New York and in sparsely populated cities — are somehow a more “authentic” foundation on which to build an electoral majority. And this is true among liberals as surely as among conservatives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Postscript: Sarah Palin’s America seems to be a touch whiter and less Hispanic<\/a> than America as a whole is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a post about racism among Obama voters, Joe Feagin at Racism Review writes: […]unlike veteran Black civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al. Sharpton, Senator Obama has been very careful (with the exception of his one Philadelphia speech) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}