Obama's Way Out of the Race Trap
Ed Kilgore's fascinating and widely read post here at TPM examines Barack Obama's prospects after the Pennsylvania primary by comparing Obama in some ways to George McGovern and proposing, with commenters, a number of strategic alternatives.
The discussion is refreshing but also disconcerting, because, not once in the post or in the 15 astute comments I'd read by the time I wrote this is there any mention that Obama is black. (One commenter did note that Obama took 90% of the black Pennsylvania primary vote, but that's it.)
It's refreshing because Obama's self-understanding and his campaign give race its due while pointing beyond it. But it's also pretty strange to see no mention of race in a discussion of Obama's prospects just after Pennsylvania reminded us of racism's depth and obstinacy among working-class whites in industrial states -- an obstinacy I illustrated here shortly before the primary.
Nixon carried the industrial states against McGovern in 1972, except Massachusetts, not only because he was the incumbent but because too much was being made of race then, in the streets and in McGovernites' color-coding of the Democratic convention. Subtle appeals to racist backlash worked. And McGovern wasn't even black.
The Clintons have made a lot of race this year, too, reminding everyone that Obama is black -- from Bill's bringing up Jesse Jackson's past South Carolina victory when Obama won there, to Sean Wilentz's falsely accusing Obamaites of playing the race card, to Hillary's jumping into the Rev. Wright loop a week late, and so on.
But there's a way that Obama could turn what the Clintons and some Republicans consider a winning issue into a cornerstone of his own strong victory.
So writes Richard Kahlenberg, who has long campaigned for a shift from race-based affirmative-action to class-based preferences that might mitigate the growing inequalities that have left working whites, as someone put it, bitter.
In the current (April 25) Chronicle of Higher Education, Kahlenberg reprises some racial history to argue that Barack Obama's candidacy could show "how to remedy the history of discrimination.. without creating new inequities and divisions. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a strong supporter of race-and gender-based affirmative acion preferences and has shown little openness to new ideas on that front.
"By contrast, Obama... emphasizes [as did Martin Luther King, Jr.] common ground among races.... Nothing would galvanize white working-class voters more than a rejection of... racial preferences in favor of King's Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged.
"Obama appears open to that approach. In his Philadelphia speech,.... he observed: 'Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race...' Their resentment builds 'when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed.' He warned against seeing those resentments as 'misguided or even racist' without understanding that they are 'grounded in legitimate concerns.'
"Moreover, in response to a reporter's question last May, Obama said that his own relatively privileged girls don't deserve affirmative-action preferences, but poor minority and white students do. Emphasizing class would remove such preferences for upper-income members of minority groups -- treatment that Obama concedes makes little sense -- and would, for the first time in 40 years, benefit the vast majority of working-class black people who have been helped little by affirmative action programs....
"It also would be politically popular: While racial preferences are strongly opposed by Americans, income-based preferences are supported by a two-to-one margin.The move would be transformative," Kahlenberg concludes, "recapturing not only the colorblind character of King's vision but also its aggressive assault on class inequality."
But since Obama holds the views Kahlenberg reports, why don't working-class whites know it?
One reason they don't is that some can't see far enough past Obama's blackness to hear anything he's saying. But another is that Obama hasn't spoken all that clearly against racial preferences. No surprise there: He has to play the hand he's been dealt as a black man running for president: He needs to avoid igniting racial controversies. He's understandably reluctant to descend to what might seem like pandering to racists, drawing the inevitable assaults from black Clinton "race industry" loyalists and the worst of the so-called civil-rights establishment.
Another reason whites haven't heard Obama on this is that the Clintons do remind whites that he is black, and they don't take issue with him on racial preferences. After all, the more openly the Clintons defended racial preferences, the more white votes Hillary would lose.
They'd rather remind us that Bill stagily rebuked Sister Souljah (who deserved it) and Jesse Jackson while styling himself a "New Democrat" in 1992. That worked for them then, too, even though no one black was running.
The Clintons' very real racism is the underside of their penitential, preferential color-coding -- a highly symbolic, cheap, and hypocritical handling of race that Obama opposes. The irony and tragedy is that, as I showed yesterday, playing the race card puts Clinton hand-in-glove with those Republicans who endorse her now only because they want to have her to demolish in the fall.
It's a reasonable risk now for Obama to flush her out on this issue of preferences and compulsive color-coding. No one could do it more truthfully or eloquently than he. Whites would hear him, for sure. Blacks wouldn't desert him, because they'd catch every nuance in his presentation.
He might lose a few upscale white liberals who like to indulge racial symbolism in order to feel good about their privileged selves far more than they'd like to make the sacrifices and do the heavily lifting that equality of opportunity really requires. But it's unlikely they'd desert him for Clinton now, and he'd gain tremendous credibility among working-class whites for being substantively trans-racial, in ways that actually benefit them, rather than symbolically trans-racial in color-coded gestures that make the pursuit of equality seem a zero-sum game.
Obama's problem isn't race.
The Obama I would vote for
would belong to a biracial church with an enlightened pastor.
(Then I would believe "unifier" wasn't just a sales pitch.)
The Obama I would vote for would never allow supporters to swarm the democratic blogs, and harass and run out supporters of his competitor. (Then I would believe "change" wasn't just marketing hype.)
The Obama I would vote for would respect his voters. He would not run behind their backs and tell Canada he was just talking down to them. Or tell San Francisco elite, they were embittered and "clinging" to what they feel to be values and traditions.
The Obama I would vote for, does not exist.
But Hillary Clinton does. Thank God.
The Clinton's have a track record of working hard. They excel.
They left this country far in better shape than they found it.
This kind of talent is a rarity.
It is hard to believe that the democrats do not realize how lucky we are to have the chance to have Hillary Clinton as our president.
I think future generations will look back and wonder what the f*k were were thinking.
April 24, 2008 12:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama's church is interracial.
I don't think he can control what his supporters do on-line.
He didn't go behind anyone's back. He told Canada the same thing he's told voters; and he said the same thing in PA that he said in San Fransisco.
And I don't think the Clintons attend a bi-racial church. I could be wrong. But most mainline Methodist churches are nearly all, if not all, white. Even the churches of the United Methodist denomination usually breakdown on a racial bases.
April 24, 2008 12:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Clinton's visit African American and multi-racial churches for photo ops. Hillary a member of the Fellowship which is very white and contains several prominent ultra-conservatives.
April 24, 2008 3:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Clintons invited Jeremiah Wright into the White House.
April 24, 2008 8:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
slumlord: So is attendance at an inter-racial congregation something that should characterize all candidates, or just the black ones?
April 24, 2008 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Obama you would vote for is exactly the person you described unless you insist on believing the falsehoods put out by the Clinton campaign and adopt the rediculous notion in a Democracy that Obama should be able to control what people in the liberal blogosphere do.
As for the Clintons, you keep saying THEY have a track record. But THEY are not running. She is.
And she doesn't have much of a track record at all. Name one major piece of legislation that has her name on it that's come out of the Senate during her time there.
Obama has two or three I can think of and he's been there less time.
Mostly Hillary's passed a bunch of earmarks, which she still hasn't released information about.
If I thought that this election was a restoration of Bill Clinton's presidency, I might consider going with Clinton. But it isn't. It's an election for Hillary and that's it. Bill will not be able to play a major role in her administration without risking overshadowing her. So either he will be shoved to the side as he is in this campaign or there will be constant infighting.
April 24, 2008 10:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
As far as affirmative action -
white women, and by extention, the white men in their families, benefit from affirmative-action much more than any racial minority group. Sense even white blue-collar families usually have both partners working, I doubt those men would want to see a decline in family income due to their partners being discriminated against in pay.
Also, several studies have shown affirmative-action doesn't displace ANY white workers or students.
April 24, 2008 12:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Although I am by no means a support or Senator Obama, I do applaud his attempts (although they will certainly be fruitless) to bridge the abysmal racial divide in this country. Perhaps, someday...
April 24, 2008 1:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 24, 2008 1:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Such enlightened discourse deserves little consideration...
April 24, 2008 1:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I saw a news article on the net today that said 8% of white voters would feel uncomfortable voting for Obama because of his race. That strikes me as pretty much on target in terms of how we have traditionally viewed race as a factor for casting a vote. When we discuss it, the usual reference point is white people who are racist and simply won't vote for a black candidate.
I believe the dynamics are far more complicated than that now.
Race will be a liability Obama will have to overcome in order to win, but more on the order of having to fight an unfair double standard of what is expected of him than simply of his blackness. The blatant racist voter is still out there, but the bigger obstacle to Obama's goal is of a different nature, though clearly a cousin of the first. Many, many white voters will judge him more harshly, and he will have to work that much harder to prove to them he is the better candidate. This is not unlike the psychological double standard black peopl routinely face in the workplace from whites and so on.
Personally, I think Obama's biggest weakness is that once the "charisma" and the emotional response he evokes is stripped away, he's pretty much just another run of the mill DLC Democrat who will have a hard time running against the Republican (in this case McCain) because his positions tend to blur the distinctions between Democrats and Republicans. Being a DLC Democrat is one of Hillary's weaknesses too.
April 24, 2008 1:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why are we even having this inane discussion? That should be the focus of Obama's retorts. Have we not evolved as a nation, and a people beyond the unspoken or closet racism and biggotry of America's, and the whitemans perfidious past. Have these battles not already been fought and won by intelligent humanbeings? Slavery, the civil war, civil rights?? Do any of these issues remind Americans of anything.
It is only the bitter biggots in redneck America clinging to their guns and the bible latching onto these primitive, ignorant, and abhorrent ideologies and policies. If the ignorant idiots in redneck America are a majority, - then shame on us, and worse woe to us, for we will have proven to be a retarded, not an advanced nation and society.
Attack Obama's positions with regard to the many compelling issues confronting America is you wish, - but race is the provenence of the ignorant idiots in redneck America, and racism, or race for race sake has no place in contemporary American political discourse.
Shame! Shame! Shame!
April 24, 2008 2:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is only the bitter biggots in redneck America clinging to their guns and the bible latching onto these primitive, ignorant, and abhorrent ideologies and policies.
Seeing as how this is the constituency that Hillary played to in Penn and she that she won, in the Democratic Primary no less, I think we are all a bit fucked.
April 24, 2008 4:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
I can't read your articles without thinking that somehow you are trying to rid yourself of guilt. All that finger pointing.
April 24, 2008 3:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Racism works both ways. Most discussions of racism I read, including here on the TPM, bemoan its presence in the election and American life, and criticize whites who won't vote for Obama on the basis of a negative racist attitude-one poster quoted a news article citing the figure at 8%- but seldom do I read complaints about what might be called a positive racism among black voters, 90% of whom voted for Obama in the PA primary, according to Mr. Sleeper. It is a given that Obama gets the black vote. What seems to be praised as loyalty and solidarity among blacks in respect to Obama, looks to me to be reverse racism against Hillary. And I sense no widespread guilt about the practice of racial solidarity. Blacks can be bigots too.
April 24, 2008 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is really obtuse.
Whites get the chance to practice racial solidarity every single day because almost all the candidates for anything are white. It is extremely rare for blacks to see a black candidate in Obama's position.
What's more having a black candidate in his position breaks through barriers for them. Having a white in the same position doesn't break any barriers for whites.
Their voting in favor of him out of racial pride. Whites are voting against him out of racial prejudice.
April 24, 2008 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Pride and Prejudice," a wonderful book by Jane Austen.
April 24, 2008 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with the premise that Obama needs to add something to his message that working class voters can relate to, but why not simply put up the positive policy of income-based preferences? no need to contrast it with affirmative action, it might not be wise to rely on black voters picking up "nuances"
working-class black and white Americans alike share the experience of economic oppression, and Obama has a deep background working on that issue, e.g. jobs training.
he needs to put that experience front and center with his message of change. he talks about it, but not enough IMHO. everyone knows Edwards is the son of a mill worker. I don't think everyone knows Obama's connection with the pain working class communities have felt in the past few decades.
April 24, 2008 8:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Chris G's comment above hits an important nerve in terms of both policy and "message," I think.
Someone should correct me if I'm wrong, but he closest that Obama has come to class-based affirmative action, I think, is his proposal that prospective college students who need tuition help should get it (presumably based on a big federal program) in return for performing natinoal service. (The national-service part intersects with McCain's call to expand Americorps.)
I think that Obama should come out and say, of affirmative action, "We promised to mend it, not end it, but we didn't really mend it" -- an obvious dig at the Clintons.
Then he should explain, gently but eloquently, what's gone wrong with racial preferences, at least in some sectors. (In colleges, where admissions officers fall all over themselves to admit qualified non-white students, we don't need enforced racial preferences; in the construction industry, for example, we still do.)
And then he should propose new intiatives. But, of course, class-based affirmative action could be far more expensive (the Republicans would cry, "socialist") than race-based.
As for his message, I noted above in the post that he has already, in his Philadelophia speech, explicitly credited the indignation of working-class whites who feel that racial preferences were disadvantaging them unfairly. This was a diffcult thing to acknowledge in a phrase or even a paragraph, as he did there, especially when others leapt to drown it out by harping on Rev. Wright.
I want to commend this old piece again, which I linked a week ago, that describes my first encounter, 32 years ago, with the enduring, obdurate racism any prominent, "Harvard" black person like Obama is still up against:
http://www.jimsleeper.com/articles/signature-pieces/Above%20the%20Battle,%20Harvard%20Crimson%201976.pdf
April 24, 2008 8:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
So, Obama should promote “class based” preferences (a la Bill Clinton) and say of affirmative action-“mend it, don’t end it” and then resuscitate Americorps, Clinton’s student service program! Well, he has followed the Clintons on everything else (just lately- green jobs, stimulus package, foreclosure relief, infrastructure bank, etc.), so why not. Oh, except the one plan he should have copied from Clinton, health care.
April 24, 2008 10:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Mr. Sleeper needs to forget everything he thinks he knows about who played the race card in this campaign and reexamine the facts with fresh eyes. Just calmly do fresh research of all these alleged instances in which the Clinton campaign supposedly played the race card. For example, the entire MLK statement by Hillary as opposed to the truncated version published by the New York Times that got so many people riled up.
Where I come from, I’m used to watching both white and black politicians play the race card. It’s easy to jump to conclusions, but some instances are pretty clear cut, like this one: http://youtube.com/watch?v=DfG-SxYCusQ&feature=related
Sometimes a campaign will throw out an obviously bogus charge ( Hillary did not care about the plight of Hurricane Katrina victims) and ask a particular ethnicity to be offended, and blatantly ask that ethnicity to vote against that candidate who is so offensive. This is a no-brainer. This is a race card. When such a charge is accompanied by a deluge other instances (Donna Brazile lying about Bill Clinton calling Obama a “kid”; a campaign memo delineating talking points for South Carolina of all the Clintons’ racial offenses; Bobby Herbert flying of the handle; even a normally balanced Eugene Robinson writing a series editorials which look very bad in hindsight; Obama himself using age old code phrases like “regrettable choice of words” and “unfortunate choice of words” to describe Hillary’s MLK statement), then I know something is up.
There was a big push going into South Carolina by the Obama campaign to portray the Clintons’ as people willing to play racial politics. It appears to me that the Obama campaign was in panic mode after the surprise loss in New Hampshire. Hillary hater Dick Morris had prepared the ground with help from Karl Rove, predicting in advance that the Clinton campaign would do it, knowing that people associated with Clinton were bound to say sometime that could be manipulated, and knowing the MSM would love this kind of story. The idea is to make criticism of a candidate difficult.
Congratulations Karl and Dick. You played the MSM again. You played a few knee-jerk liberals who can completely ignore something like video link provided above featuring an Obama campaign co-chair, but go crazy over a “shuck and jive” comment delivered by Andrew Cuomo the same day, same time.
The powers of perception of knee-jerk folks are something to behold. These are literally some of the same people who misperceived Jimmy Carter when he ran for President. They were certain that anybody who managed to get elected Governor of Georgia had played the race card. Ted Kennedy was as certain he could see through Carter as he is now certain he can see through Bill Clinton. Kennedy is a good liberal, but he is not in the same class as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter when is comes to recognizing a race card.
April 24, 2008 8:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Clinton talking points.
Bill Clinton himself here recently agreed that Obama hadn't done this.
The supposed Obama campaign memo that supposedly sets out a plan to do this was not approved by teh campaign and when it became public was immediately condemned by Obama.
You ask for objectively looking at this stuff. You're the one not being objective and not up on the facts.
April 24, 2008 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
You know, your response had nothing to do with what was written in this posting.
Aside from the first sentence "it isnt about race"....inwhich, I think you showed up to be a IDIOT as the Jeff Foxworthy post last night showed.http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/04/you-might-be-an-idiot.php
But I wanted to point out the fact that your response had nothing to do with the post.
April 24, 2008 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
aawwww come on!. This was a reply to the first comment.
April 24, 2008 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Johnathan:
Not sure to whom your comment is directed, but Sleeper’s post is certainly about racism. He wants to glibly and repeatedly accuse the Clintons of racism without offering any evidence.
Well, I decided to give him a little hard evidence of race card play. I’ve noticed that Obama supporters (and I’ll be one if he wins the nomination) are very uncomfortable with the Jesse Jackson Jr. video that I link to above, and they are very uncomfortable with the context in which it occurred. I’ve never seen any acknowledgement that it was a blatant appeal to African Americans (I figured this out by noting that Jesse used the words “African Americans”) to vote against Clinton in South Carolina based upon her supposed unconcern for Hurricane Katrina victims (I figured this out by noting Jackson used the words “Hurricane Katrina victims” and “South Carolina”).
After a while, it’s hard to suppress sarcasm. I truly think that all those who accept Sleeper’s accusations of Clinton racism, need to do a little research followed by a little soul searching regarding their own biases.
I’ve got my own Foxworthyism for you: You might be an idiot if you can watch the Hurricane Katrina statement by Jesse Jackson Jr. and conclude he is not playing the race card.
Another one: You might be an idiot if you cannot comprehend the chronology that Jesse made this statement the day after the New Hampshire primary loss, prior to the South Carolina primary, and prior to Bill Clinton’s statement about Jesse Jackson Sr.
Click the link and watch it several times: http://youtube.com/watch?v=DfG-SxYCusQ&feature=related
Then consider the lack of outcry by the MSM. Consider the lack of protest by the left blogosphere.
April 24, 2008 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is a great deal of promise in more forcefully pushing Obama's view of class-based affirmative action out to the voters. Anecdotally, I've left a lot of the older folks in my family with more, er, obdurate views practically stuttering when I explain Obama's positions to them and why it's abundantly clear that his policies, if enacted, could make them more bitter, not less. Professor Sleeper states above that "whites would hear him for sure." But that reassurance only takes us so far. To "hear" is one thing. But to leave behind that to which we "cling" and "believe," up to and through those fleeting seconds in the ballot box, is quite another matter, and still, I think, an open question.
By the time the Pennsylvania ballots were counted, Obama had cut Clinton's lead in half from the polling in early April. But outside of the Philadelphia suburbs and into the rural counties, Hillary's margins of victory were, disconcertingly, all wider. By now, that's old news. But it behooves us to reflect on why this was so. And even the broadest, most sweeping look back leads to the conclusion that the Obama campaign failed to demonstrate how he, community organizer or not, would fight for them.
Like Sleeper seems to be getting at, I agree that Obama needs to engage more meaningfully in these class-based, bread-and-butter arguments. The lesson that we have learned from his campaign is that to declare the states as "united" time and time over and rightfully extol trans-racial and trans-class arguments is all well and good, but ultimately vacuous if it leaves the "heavy lifting" out of the equation. Perhaps, now, Obama has no choice but to learn, and know, this for himself.
April 24, 2008 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama is ahead in the contest for the Democratic nomination. It is unknown how much the Obama/Sleeper recommendations would help Obama in this campaign with any group, including working class whites (you’d think) or hurt him with blacks and liberal whites as Sleeper speculates. So Obama is not likely to take a chance prior to the general election.
It occurs to me that Clinton faces the same dilemma, but she might be more willing to take a chance since she is behind. Of course, were she to do so, I’m sure that Sleeper would congratulate her for her right position and courage.
April 24, 2008 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whites are generally empowered. They don't have to worry about silly accusations and concerns - ie, Gov. Rendal was slurping the Farakhan juice in 1997, but is Clinton even questioned about it? Clinton worked with folks more radical than Weathermen Underground - has she had to answer for it?
Blacks, however, are generally disempowered. There's hardly one issue facing black Americans that isn't impacted negatively by race. So, we ban together to fight back against rampant, pervasive racism.
Remind me again, what anti-white racism are whites banning together to fight against?
April 24, 2008 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, but when that racism that blacks have banded together to fight against for generations is in the form of Hillary and Bill Clinton (of all people), don't you think it possible that this natural inclination to band together in opposition has been played on?
Do you really think that the Clintons, all of a sudden, in this one campaign out of 35 years of politics, and not even from the beginning of this campaign but only when the next primary wins might put it away for them, decide to start race-baiting and alienate the AA vote that they were outwardly working so very hard to consolidate? That one of the smartest and most politically savvy couples in generations are going to do one stupid thing after another, complete amateur hour but just regardibg the issue of race, and that could return no benefit to them in any way but could sink their campaign and everything they have been working towards, doesn't just strain credulity; it snaps it in two.
The fact that, within weeks of the dog whistle campaign, AA support switched from 70% Clinton to 80-90% Obama indicates that something polarizing was taking place in an organized campaign. Obviously, this 180 swing wasn't just a sudden collective realization that Obama was a great post-racial uniter (or that he was "electable"). It wasn't his health care plan or populist views or the war because those things hadn't changed. Was it that Bill Clinton was now seen to be "doing to blacks what he did to Monica"?
April 24, 2008 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is not due to a "natural inclination" the answer is simple. Clinton was not seen as the best candidate as well as most voters.
So would you like to see Sharpton take Obama' place?
April 25, 2008 1:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I meant natural inclination in terms of a group that has been historically oppressed, hence naturally inclined to band together in self interest and brotherhood. As I said, the very sudden and drastic shift in support portends a reason other than not being "seen as the best candidate." I've never been a Sharpton fan, but I have to admit that he sounded pretty good when running last time (my esteem for him as a politician grew anyway).
April 25, 2008 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink