Slouching Towards the Presidency, 2008: Why Race Matters

While the Democrats (and even the Republicans from time to time) are evoking Martin Luther King whenever there are black voters to be courted, King’s goal of a color blind United States seems a long way off.

It was inevitable that Obama’s campaign which trumpets change and unity and largely avoids discussion of race would become mired in this. By New Hampshire, pundits trying to rationalize their inaccurate predictions and the discrepancies in the faulty exit polls of their employers, even suggested that some white voters were too embarrassed to say that they hadn’t (not that they wouldn’t vote for a black candidate, mind you) voted for a black person. From there things got even sillier with Hillary Clinton emphasizing Lyndon Johnson’s role in the civil rights movement over MLK, some said; and Obama’s campaign only too happy to establish Obama’s black cred in South Carolina, a state in which about 50 percent of the demo voters are black, by saying in a press release Hillary didn’t credit MLK enough. Add some media fuel to the fire, and presto, race is at the forefront of the Democratic race.

Voters may be falling into line as well. Many blacks appear to have set aside their qualms about whether Obama is black enough, whether he can win as a black man, and some are asking whether they should support the wife of the “first black president” because she, like her husband, really isn’t black. Some blacks in South Carolina seemed to rally for Obama when his staff in South Carolina suggested that Hillary Clinton is racializing the campaign. Some whites are reacting predictably, it appears, by moving to support Hillary Clinton or John Edwards.

In short, woe to the candidate that discusses race other than in platitudes, or, more precisely, woe to the black candidate. Leaving aside the question as to who is responsible for racializing the campaign, it is Obama who will likely pay for it. Obama is not in danger of becoming marginalized like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, but he will certainly lose votes in both the primary and, if he makes it that far, even more in the general election if race continues to play such a prominent role. The meaningful discussion of race, as important as it is to the well-being of this country, is politically repulsive to voters and the more it is discussed, the better for Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. White voters do not want to discuss race any more than they want to discuss class and there is little room on the national political scene for a black candidate that is perceived to have a racial axe to grind.

Maybe whites are ready to put aside the most banal but detrimental aspects of racialism—thinking primarily in terms of race--and do as so many black voters have done for so long and vote for the candidate that best supports their interests. Whites have done this also in liberal Massachusetts, for example, where Deval Patrick was elected Governor. Few would argue that Massachusetts is like most of the country, however, and there are a lot of states—South Carolina is certainly one of these--where some whites wouldn’t vote for a black person if he walked on water, let alone if he were perceived to see things racially.

The Democratic campaign will give us a pretty good idea as to how near or far we are from MLK’s color blind society. One of our first glimpses will be in South Carolina tonight.