Obama and the "racist" vote

Posted 25 weeks 3 days ago by Ben

A friend forwards a rather cynical story from AdAge about why "even hardcore racists will vote for Obama." The gist: Racists don't want to be thought of as racists. And Obama is appealing because he is "acceptably black."

Writes Bob Garfield:

Acceptably black means being nonthreatening to white people inclined to feeling threatened by black people. It means standard English, clean-cut appearance (or, as Joe Biden fumbled, "clean") and the most Caucasian features possible. These obviously are not objective measures of character or worth; just as obviously, they are measures of what sells to the vast, white audience. Halle Berry and Denzel Washington are acceptably black. Your local news anchors are acceptably black. Tupac was not.

OK, a few points.

First, this idea that the United States remains a racist country is simply nonsense. It's 2008, not 1948, or 1968 for that matter. Are there hard-core racist Americans? Sure. Just not that many to make a difference. There are many more Americans who are guilty about the country's racist past, and many Americans who live to exploit that guilt. But that, as Christopher Hitchens explains today, is a different matter.

Second, Obama, while unacceptably liberal (to me), does have genuine bipartisan appeal. Witness the kind words bordering on effusive praise from conservative pundits and editorial pages. That said, Shelby Steele has written the definitive book on this subject: A Bound Man. Steele's thesis: Obama cannot be all things to all races, so he will lose. (A shorter version of Steele's argument is here.)

This obsession over Obama's race and lingering racism in America is really beside the point, and unseemly at that. The only question that matters is: Does he have the temperament, experience and sound policy ideas to be president? Maybe, no, and definitely not.