Darwin,
Shouldn’t matter, doesn’t matter to me, to deadolly, to you, or to any intelligent, thinking person. Problem is, America has its fair share of those who are neither intelligent nor thinking.
Back on Feb 5 when Minnesota held it’s Caucus for the Democrats, I had no idea where Minnesotans stood on the Obama vs. Clinton choice, but I had been an Obama supporter from Day One, so I stood in a soul crushing line to cast my ballot.
When the results came in, I looked at the Secretary of State website to see how the numbers were shaping up. You may recall, Minnesota went for Obama over Clinton by a 2:1 margin. I now live in the Twin Cities, which is a very happening and progressive metropolitan area. Anyway, the county I grew up in was the mirror image of the rest of the state, Obama was very unpopular in the area I grew up in.
The area I grew up in is a northern Minnesoat town where as recently as 1994, a local bar owner refused service to some black patrons (there were very few non-whites in our community, but as our Community College’s football program began to recruit from other states in the early 90s, that changed overnight). I have little doubt that the mentality in Northern Minnesota is that much different from that of Northern Wisconsin, having been there many times myself.
Racism is still alive and well, some of it is blatant, some of it is not. I was listening to a panel discussion with 13 voters from York, Pennsylvania, 7 white, 6 non-white, about race and their Presidential choices, and all 13 went in thinking race played no part of their decision, but all 13 came out of the discussion thinking that on some level it must be important. Most notably all 6 non-whites were for Obama, the 7 whites were split. One could make the claim that non-whites are prejudiced in favor of non-whites based on this, but given that one of these panelists cited persistent fears that despite Obama’s admonitions to the contrary, she couldn’t shake the fear that he “might” have once been a Muslim, and once a Muslim always a Muslim (which is more religious stereotyping than racial, but it seemed unlikely within the context of the conversation that she would have had that fear had Obama been white).
Another recent blip I heard on NPR was a person saying they just couldn’t vote for Obama, because he is black…a bit more blatant.
And in just the past 24 hours, I was reading David Sedaris’ new book “When You Are Engulfed in Flames” and was stunned to come across a passage where he described a sojourn he made with his brother to a trailer 20 miles outside Raleigh, NC to acquire some marijuana, when the dealer’s wife motioned to the remote control and asked him to hand her “the nigger”.
Another less recent example, but still pretty recent, friends of ours from Minnesota moved to Alpharetta Georgia in 1998, and moved back just last year. We visited their new home in November of 1999 and were told that recently while driving, they passed a night club which had a clearly posted “Whites Only” sign indicating their patronage policy.
And as recently as yesterday, journalists were still discussing the Bradley Effect, i.e. the theory that people will tell pollsters that they’d vote for a black person, but when push came to shove, they wouldn’t actually do it, or that people will not want to come off as overtly racist, so they will misstate their intentions. Here’s an article by Sean Oxendine of The Next Right (a website dedicated to rebuilding the Republican party from the grassroots up), where he admits that the advantage still remains Obama’s but that if we do wake up on November 5 and wonder how McCain won, these will be the arguments, and he includes a lengthy analysis of (albeit selected) Democratic primary results to prove his point:
http://www.thenextright.com/sean-oxendine/what-is-the-argument-for-why-mccain-will-win
So, to answer your question, Darwin…I don’t believe skin color matters to the Presidency. But it’s not what I believe that matters…it’s what enough people believe, and if enough people think you have to be white to be President, hello President McCain.
I hope and believe that won’t be the case.
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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