Racial Judo
Whether or not he ends up the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama has already proved one thing: at least as far as Democratic primary voters go, a black man can attract substantial support from non-black voters even when there is a white alternative. Starting in Iowa and moving on from there, Obama has already probably won more individual votes than any other black politician in American history. Indeed, whenever one of his opponents has brought up his complexion, no matter how obliquely, his support has increased. The people who find racial attacks disgusting apparently outnumber the people who are ignorant enough to take racial arguments to heart.
Assuming he does win the nomination he will instantly become Public Enemy #1 of the right wing noise machine. It is going to say ugly, scathing things about him as loudly and as often as it can. That’s what it does. Here’s the good news though, that noise machine, from the lofty heights of Fox News and the American Enterprise Institute all the way down to the crudest and lowliest of blogs, is made up almost exclusively of white people. Sure there are a few minorities of various skin tones on board for the ride, but it’s a very monochrome operation.
We could get historical and start talking about the civil rights movement and the Republican “Southern Strategy”, but we don’t need to. Let’s just combine those two facts from above: 1) racial attacks on Obama are a one-step-forward-two-steps-back proposition, 2) most of the people attacking him are going to be conservative white people who, I’m guessing, don’t have much day to day interaction with the colored folks. That is a winning combination for Barack Obama.
If I were in charge of one of the press organs of the right I’d be furiously writing memos reminding all my, ahem, talent that nothing with even a whiff of racism about it can be said about Obama. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for the rest of us, a lot of right wingers with big audiences (in print, on-line, or through radio and television) aren’t all that clever. They wouldn’t know how to construct an argument with subtlety if their lives depended on it. Especially when it comes to matters of race they’re so clumsy that they are inevitably going to write, say or do something that is a lot more racist than they realize. I expect to see a lot statements from right wingers beginning or ending with racial disclaimers, “The PC police don’t want me to say this, but…”, “It has nothing to do with his race, but…”, “…I’d be saying the same thing if he were white”, etcetera etcetera etcetera. Media Matters is going to have a field day.
It’s possible that the general electorate isn’t as ready to embrace Negro leadership as the Democratic electorate, but I don’t think so. Anyone racist enough to out and out not vote for a black man probably isn’t voting Democratic anyway. For the rest of the country simply raising race as an issue reminds people of unpleasant things they’d rather not think about; and drives them further into the arms of the Senator from Illinois.
